Full text of "Future Science Fiction v04n03 (1953 09)"

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sept. SCIENCE FICTION

ALL STOR

Dust Thou Art... I fe§

.^Douiufinion
mflGPZinf /

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Age 30

Age 40

% Increase

— Average income
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AUTOMOTIVE

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□ Auto Body Rebuilding
and Refinishing

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AVIATION

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BUILDING

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CHEMISTRY

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ENGINEERING

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DRAFTING

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□ Mathematics

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□ Good English
MECHANICAL
AND SHOP

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RADIO. TELEVISION,
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RAILROAD

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YEAR OF THE SIX
MILLIONTH STUDENT

Special tuition rates to members ot the U. S. Armed Forces. Canadian residents send
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Robert W. Lowndes

Editor

Feature Story

DUST THOU ART Kris Neville

Was Matuska seeing the future of his own kind here on Earth?

Novelet

TO SAVE A WORLD Irving E. Cox, Jr.

When there's naught but horror in the truth, people seek a lie .

Short Stories

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS Harry Warner, Jr.

. . . can mean sheer, unadulterated chaos, at times . . .

STAND WATCH IN THE SKY Algis Budrys

A strange, absorbing tale of an eerie vigil beyond the clouds . . .

DOUBLE-TALK . Charles Dye

He was a slave to the very words with which they hailed him "prince".

PLEASE TO REMEMBER Mack Reynolds

Uncle Manfred could be tolerant about today because he remembered . . .

ANYONE HERE SEEN HERBIE GREEN? Robert K. Otturn

Or anything calling itself by that name?

IXTL IGO, SON! Raymond E. Banks

There was no profit in passing off this redhead as his profits!

@?S!i Article & Departments ggg

DOWN TO EARTH (Editorial Comment & Readers’ Letters) 6

REMEMBERED WORDS (Originals Winners ) 34

READIN’ AND WRITHIN; 46

Book Reviews by James Blish and Robert W. Lowndes

THE PHANTOM PHOENICIANS (Special Article )

L. Sprague de Camp 58

THE RECKONING (Your Report on our May Issue) 98

READERS’ PREFERENCE COUPON (Vote Here, if you like) 98

Cover by Milton Luros, illustrating "Stand Watch In The Sky"

Interior Illustrations by Beecham, Luros, Orban and Sibley

Next IsNiit on aule September 1st

published bi-monthly by COLUMBIA PUBLICATIONS
Maas. Editorial ana executive offices at 241 Church Street. New York 1$

FUTURE SCIENCE FICTION. September, 1953,

INC., 1 Appleton Street. Holyoke, Maas. Editorial a .« ^

New York. Entered as second class matter at the Post Office at Holyoke. Mass, under the act of March

1879. Entire contents copyriKhted 1953 by Columbia Publications. Inc. 2b< per copy: yearly subscription $1.50.
•When submitting manuacrlpta, enclose stamped, self-addressed envelope for their return, If found unavailable,
The publishers will exercise care in the handling of unsolicited manuscript*, but assume no responsibility to*
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A Department of Letters and Comment

R ECENTLY, I read a short tale
of the future, written in 1921,
telling of the marvellous world
of 2231. It starts out with a descrip-
tion of the metropolis at night, a quiet
city, even with the air-traffic. The
mid-European mail-plane goes by si-
lently; in nine short hours, the au-
thors tell us, it will drop American
mail in London. The buildings are so
tall that the moon’s rays barely touch
the bottom of the canyons they form,
but at the ends of the avenues at
ground level, huge street-fans drain
off the day’s accumulation of foul
air; along the thoroughfare, automatic

atomizers emit pale clouds of gas, ster-
ilizing the atmosphere; and the ave-
nues are lit with pendant phospher
bulbs, “which were never refilled, and
which permanently emanated a deep,
green light”.

Then comes drama, as a small plane
eludes the landing-disk atop a particu-
lar building (such discs are on the
tops of all the buildings) and zooms
against the wall of the tallest of the
skyscrapers. The plane is equipped
with a “suction plunger” at its prow;
it doesn’t crash, but thunks into the
buildingside, and is fastened there, “a
[Turn To Page 8 ]

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ITH'Bfi Science Fiction

small upright propeller at the stern”
keeping it aloft. From this “Vampire
plane”, as it is called, a pair of crooks
emerge, enter the building, and pro-
ceed to rob the Continental Reserve
Bank.

The police are taken to the building
via pneumatic tubes; they fire on the
crooks with electric guns, but the cul-
prits are cased from head to foot in
rubber suits, and escape. All seems to
favor them, until, through miscalcula-
tion on the malefactors’ part, the plane
is caught in the terrific suction of one
of the great street-fans, and chewed to
pieces, passengers, loot, and all, by
the mighty blades of the fans. Thus
justice is served.

Obviously, such a story wouldn’t go
today — but for all the simple-minded-
ness of the plot and action, and the
questionable “science” (one wonders
why the giant fans weren’t shielded),
that story has a fascination in the pic-
ture it draws of the future — an appeal
I haven’t seen very often in the past
decade.

And it made me wonder why.

The simple, easy explanation is that
I’ve been reading science-fiction too
long; I’ve lost my capacity for being
awed. Science, since Hiroshima, has
been going so fast in all directions that
my imagination can’t even keep up
with it, let alone run ahead of it.

But, if that were the case, then I
wouldn’t have gotten anything out of
the story mentioned above but laughs.

No, I think the fault lies not in us
oldtime readers, but in the authors who
write today’s science-fiction. The
scribes who told the wonderful tales
of yesterday, for all their many faults,
had a feeling about the greatness of
days to come that few show today.
This is not to censure present-day
writers, who have gained in the quali-
ty of expression where they have lost
in imagination. Perhaps the trend is
irreversible; perhaps the fascination is
part and parcel to a certain naivite

which the present age has discarded
along with its science-plus-socialism-
equals-utopia formulas — and with the
bathos of the “Skylarks” and their su-
per hat-tricks.

But sometimes I wonder if the
young convert to science-fiction, read-
ing th? best of present-day writing,
has as much fun as some of us old-
timers did.

Getting down to author-facts, we
have the following on this issue’s line-
up.

KRIS NEVILLE came to light with
“The Hand From the Stars”, In the
July 1949 issue of Super Science Sto-
ries; since then, he’s done a number
of memorable short stories, such as
“Take Two Quiggies” in Magazine of
Fantasy and Science Fiction. Neville
regards “Dust Thou Art...” as his
best story to date, and I’m inclined
to agree.

HARRY WARNER, JR. beat out
all the opposition in our March issue,
taking first place with his first-pub-
lished story, “Cold War”. His second
appearance showed another facet to his
talent — whimsy — and the present story
is along similar lines.

ALGIS BUDRYS made a powerful
impression on many of us, when his
“Walk to the World” appeared in the
November 1952 issue of Space Science
Fiction. Since then, he’s shown that he
can work equally well with fantasy.

CHARLES DYE has been a “reg-
ular” with this magazine, since “Time
Killer” appeared in our May 1951
issue.

MACK REYNOLDS started show-
ing up in various magazines in 1950;
you’ll find another of his short sto-
ries in the current Science Fiction
Quarterly.

ROBERT K. OTTUM didn’t cop
first place with his first story, “She
Called Me Frankie”, which appeared
in the May Science Fiction Quarterly;
but that story did receive a good deal
of appreciative comment.

[Tarn To Page 83]

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The frail of dark dropi in the *now lad Matuska to a female. "Why", he thought
In horror, it ii tho one who came to the compound, yeiterday; I gave her a blanket

from the warehouie,"

— .iiH ...

, ^SRillip r

Our Feature Story

DUST

Looking at these decadent beings of
Earth, Matuska saw the future of his
own people, the end to which they,
too must come. But must it be thus?

THOU ART...

by Kris Neville

(illustrated by Don Sibley)

T HE CEMETERIES on Earth in 2988 — it was a bleak, rain-swept
March day of that year when the colonists arrived in their spaceship
and planted their flag (a ritual, for there was no one to contest owner-
ship) in the moist land warmed by the rocket-blast — the cemeteries were ill-
kept and markerless.

The native came less than a week after their arrival. He was a squat,
hairy, ugly brute. Matuska was the only one who had bothered to study

FUTURE Science Fiction

the spy-tapes and learn the language,
so he spoke to the native. The native
made it known that the cemetery to
the west was the natives’ cemetery;
that the natives would continue to use
it; and that the colonists were not to
interfere. The native, having said
what he had come to say, departed.

“Why did you leave the cities?”
Matuska cried after him. There was
no answer.

Aside from that, the natives ignored
the colony completely, for more than
a year. When they moved in the for-
est, hunting with arrows and spears,
they refused to see the colonists hunt-
ing with weapons infinitely more pow-
erful, more accurate, and more dead-
ly than their own.

In the cemetery, the mounds contin-
ued to weather away. Each new grave
disinterred unmarked bones. Dry,
tangled brambles shackled the older
mounds to the earth and drew them
down with the dead fingers of prom-
ised obscurity. And the newer mounds,
those hacked out of the raw, frozen
earth during the colonists’ first winter,
were being compressed by snow and
rain and wind-driven sleet. Except for
the most recent graves, the cemetery
was always a thicket. It had been, for
no one could tell how many years.

Matuska was as nearly acclimated
as he would ever be to the heavy air
and the high gravity. On the first an-
niversary of their arrival, he stood in
the cemetery among the natives and
watched them prepare to bury a youth
killed during the hunt, a youth whose
death had been heralded by the beat-
ing of cymbals at dawn — sounds heard
even within the central house of the
compound where Matuska lived —
heard faintly, distantly, like the far-
off, brassy throbbing of a giant heart.
Towering over the silent natives, trem-
bling with the miserable cold, Matus-
ka waited for the grave to be finished;
for the body to be lowered; for the
first clod to fall on the naked chest.

A native on his left fingered an age-

less steel knife. The dog at the na-
tive’s side whined for its dead master;
the native petted it and murmured
wordlessly.

Matuska bowed his head, listened,
heard the clod, then turned and walked
toward the central house, leaning into
the sheeting rain, moving his feet with
difficulty through the sticky mud.

“You must not continue to go out
among them unarmed,” a colonist told
him when he entered the compound.

“I’m safe,” Matuska said. He knew
that the natives dared not test the
universality of the law they knew so
well among themselves: violent retri-
bution.

Wet and miserable he stood at the
window, moving his hands vaguely,
crying sadly without sound or tears.

As custom provided, the native with
a knife slit the dog’s throat; for all
his lesser height, his arms could have
held Matuska’s frail body as easily
as they had held the struggling dog.

Slowly, when all was done — when
the mounds were heaped and the
equipment gathered — the natives sep-
arated in silence, awkward, heavy-
chested creatures moving with odd,
shuffling steps.

They had completed a ritual of
greatest consequence, if Matuska
could only understand it. He clenched
his hands against the window-ledge as
they vanished from sight, one by one,
into the dreary forest.

He wanted desperately to thrust
himself upon them in such a way that
they could no longer ignore him; he
wanted to beat with his fists against
the hairy chests, against the barrier
of indifference, until he was recog-
nized. The world of his co-colonists
was a world he could not penetrate.
He was alone, alone, outside of eve-
rything.

He was possessed of monstrous and
incommunicable knowledge. Bottled
up without outlet, it had come to in-
,fuse his whole being, until nothing in
his life was uncolored by it. It be-

DUST THOU ART . . .

came so mixed up with everything else
that even he no longer completely un-
derstood it.

He had conceived an obsession
about the natives: they, also, were
possessed of the same knowledge.

ICO UR MONTHS later, when the
*■ cemetery was drying with parched
wind; when the leaves were curling;
when the grass was brown, the na-
tives buried their chieftain. That sum-
mer (it was 2989 now, a black-and-
white mocking bird perched in the
dead oak at the far end of the mounds
and sang mournfully in the moonlight,
reproducing all the various sounds of
bird-life without pause, from dark to
daybreak, for the better part of a
month. It was killed by a native who
crept silently upon it with drawn bow.

Matuska could not escape his cul-
tural commitment; most of his wak-
ing-hours were devoted to the routine
labors of establishing the colony. He
had seen the natives near at hand only
once between the burial in March and
the burial in July. He came upon two
of them at the edge of the ruined
city — smelling the strong, unwashed
reek of them an instant before he
saw them facing each other on the
sun-dappled grass. A fitful Ireeze rus-
tled the leaves intermittently. He was
a mile upwind from their filthy, squal-
id village, so the native odor was un-
expected; Matuska stopped at once,
watching, listening.

Here, at the rim of the forest, at
the edge of the city, with lost glory
crumbling about him, he peered at
their brute eyes and lax faces seek-
ing reassurance that he was not alone.

He held his breath as they circled,
knife-armed, ready to leap and slash
each other because of some insult,
some hot word, some abridgement of
pride. Matuska cried out in anguish,
rushing, stumbling toward them.

Both dropped into a defensive
crouch at the unexpected sound. And
Matuska was between them, towering
over them — great, sad-eyed, waiting,

not caring if they flung themselves
upon him or not.

Their breathing was loud and their
breath was stale. Their eyes darted un-
easily from his figure and away, and
for several heart beats the scene was
frozen.

And then the danger was past.

The natives vanished into the for-
est. After a timeless period, there was
thrashing in the grass and then si-
lence. Matuska shuddered.

One native, bloody and proud, came
back to the clearing. Unaware of the
stink of his grimy body, he surveyed
the land combatively. He was master
of the planet. Nothing gave him pause;
nothing challenged his superiority;
nothing made him slave.

The week after the bowman shot the
mocking-bird, Matuska attended the
funeral of the chieftain. The natives
clustering at the graveside no longer
had the sweet odor of stale sweat about
them; they were scrubbed clean, as if
to meet some obscure challenge they
only dimly understood. Invisible, Ma-
tuska stood, head bowed, waiting for
the first clod to fall; then he turned
away in order not to witness the execu-
tion of the chieftain’s dog.

2 -

HE THIRD summer
after the colonists ar-
rived, the natives
sent an emissary.
The colony had ex-
panded, had become
fat and prosperous
and rooted. The
compound was now
weathered, and the
raw wood of the
buildings was warped and cracking.
Within another three years, smelters
would be opened; the top-soil would
be strained for metals; huge gouts of
flame would lave the night sky, and
the million- voiced roar of furnaces
would shake the forest. In the third

FUTVBE Science Fiction

summer (2990 now) the first stage of
colonization was entering its final
phase. The farm-lands lay fertile miles
eastward. There were vast stands of
corn-like grain and of native wheat (of
which the colonists were fond) ; terres-
trial and alien vegetables queerly in-
termixed in the neat-rowed truck-gar-
dens near the compound.

Soon, in their mastery of the land,
the colonists would eliminate the for-
est westward. Already an abrazed,
fuzed-quartz road stretched through it
like a ruled line, to end at the distant
mountaintop where the relay-station
pointed its aerial finger to the stars.
The first stage was passing; the
groundwork was laid. A hundred tow-
ering silos stood filled and waiting for
the second-stage colonists.

In ten years, the compound would
be a city of shiny metal and brilliant-
ly-colored plastic; great roads would
extend radially outward like clutching
fingers, grasping, possessing, retaining
the conquered land. But for now, at
the end of the first stage, the native
cemetery (at Matuska’s insistence) re-
mained untouched — a landmark; an
anchor to the past; a representation
of the old verities to which the na-
tives still clung with tenacious faith,
and no longer understood.

They sent a female. Males were the
emissaries between hostile tribes.

The female was tall and fair-
skinned, lithe and willowy; her hair
was combed and knotted neatly in the
back; her skin was scrubbed, and the
crudely-woven dress she wore was im-
maculate.

She walked up the hard-surfaced
street, keeping equidistant from the
log houses on either side. She stopped
once and spoke; the colonist, not un-
derstanding her words, gestured her
on.

Matuska left his window and hur-
ried to the central doorway.

She stood before him, erect, breath-
ing easily, her head coming scarcely

to his shoulder. “You are the one who
comes to the burials?”

“Yes.”

“I have come for some clothing ma-
terial,” she said.

“Why did you abandon the cities?”

“I have come for some clothing ma-
terial,” she repeated.

“Why. . . ?” But he read in her eye3
the futility of questions.

“ . . . Come with me,” he said.

“I will follow you; you know the
way.”

She stood aside for him. She fol-
lowed close behind him as he led her
down the main street of the compound
to the community warehouse.

She showed no flicker of surprise,
no twitch of envy, as she surveyed
shelf upon shelf of clean-smelling mer-
chandise. Without breaking stride, she
went to the nearest counter, picked up
a packet of brightly-colored plastic
yardage and nodded curtly. “This will
do,” she said, hugging it to her body.
She moved quickly toward the door.

She returned within an hour. Con-
sulting no one, she walked through the
compound (as if to be sure she were
seen) and into the truck-garden be-
yond. She knelt and began to weed a
row of alien vegetables by plucking the
individual weeds from around each
plant, with meticulous fingers.

An hour before sunset, Matuska put
aside his assignment for the day and
went to the female. Weary and ex-
hausted, she continued to work, her
raw fingers moving mechanically.

Bending, he rested a gentle hand on
her shoulder. “Go home,” he said. “The
work you have done has more than
paid for the material.”

A casual smile twitched hollowly at
her sweaty face. She ignored his hand
and his voice. He left her there, back
bent painfully, fingers moving, mov-
ing; at nightfall, he could still see her
until it became too dark to see.

Thereafter it was not uncommon for
a female native to come to the com-
pound, to choose from the warehouse

DUST THOU ART . . .

what material she desired, and to per-
form as an implicit, never-stated term
of barter— a more than equivalent
amount of labor. The females spoke
no more than necessary. Matuska was
unable to penetrate their reserve.

npHE MAN, his name was Kinny,
did not come until autumn.

Kinny — a squat block of a figure
with long, ungainly arms, tiny, restless
eyes, and hair wetted down until it
glistened over his skull like a metal
covering — stood before the doorway.
He did not look at Matuska, but peered
beyond him into the corridor. He
swung his long arms back and forth
restlessly. He said nothing.

“What do you want?” Matuska
asked uneasily. .

Grunting, Kinny brushed past him
with sudden energy and planted his
feet wide apart on 'the corridor floor-
ing. “I came to see the pens.” His
arms remained motionless while his
nostrils wrinkled and his head swung
suspiciously from side to side.

It was a colloquialism Matuska had
not previously encountered. “You mean
the inside, here?”

Kinny grunted.

“But first, tell me, you must tell
me: why did your race abandon the
cities?”

Kinny glared at him. I answer no
questions, he seemed to say. Angrily
he started for the door.

“No, no! Wait, wait! I’ll show
you ...”

“You go, I’ll follow.”

In silence, Matuska led him along
the corridor. At his own door he
stopped. “This is where I live. Would
you like to see my room?”

Kinny gestured that he would.

When Matuska closed the door be-
hind them, Kinny stared around wild-
ly as if seeking some way to escape
from the sudden oppression of the exit-
less walls. Then, seeing Matuska’s
calm, he grinned foolishly and moved
his hands limply. He rolled his shoul-

ders and stretched the muscles in his
arms. He surveyed the wooden furni-
ture whose size dwarfed him: the mas-
sive bed, the high bureau, the tall, nar-
row bookcase, the sturdy table. “It is
well enough."

His eyes traveled again around the
room. They rested for an instant on
the brilliantly-colored painting above
the bed, passed on, came back reluc-
tantly. He bent forward; his mouth
grew lax. He moved toward the bed,
and at the edge stopped, still staring
(transfixed now) at the delicate de-
sign and brushmanship, capturing as if
alive an alien bird and an alien land-
scape.

“It is a beautiful picture,” Matuska
said, towering beside the native. “I . . .
I keep many beautiful things. . .” He
reached across and handed it down.
Kinny rubbed the polished frame ea-
gerly with his heavy, blunt-fingered
hands.

“Not as beautiful as the woods in
spring.” His eyes glistened with excite-
ment. “But well enough. . . I will take
it with me.” Then, swinging his treas-
ure carelessly from his left hand, he
started for the door. He stopped. “The
cities drew death.”

“Yes, yes,” Matuska said excitedly.
“They’re not enough, and if they’re not
enough, they’re nothing. That’s what
you mean, isn’t it?”

Kinny shrugged. “The cities drew
death.” And he was gone.

They do understand! Matuska cried
triumphantly to himself.

Fifteen minutes later, the picture
safely deposited beyond Matuska’s
reach, the native stood at Matuska’s
doorway once more. Before entering he
studied the room carefully as if to de-
tect any trap set in his absence. Then
inside, he moved cautiously from one
article of furniture to another. “It is
dusty.”

“I would like to talk to you for a
moment.”

“You should dust it.” Kinny drew a
finger over the table and held it up

FUTURE Science Fiction

for inspection, regarding it himself with
exaggerated fastidiousness. He ran his
other ungainly hand through his new-
washed hair, as if to attract attention
to it. “Give me something to dust with;
I’ll show you how.”

“Look in the top drawer. Yes, pull
it out. There, use that. I want to ask
you some questions.”

“I dust,” the native said imperious-
ly. “I do not answer questions.” He
brandished the cloth. “You watch.”

spoke and were forever locked away
from each other by the worlds they
could not entirely forsake.

Dimly, unvocally, Kinny experi-
enced shadows of his racial past among
the ornaments and colors of Matuska’s
room; sadly, frighteningly, Matuska
experienced the silence of his racial
future among the weathering mounds
of the cemetery.

T_TE DUSTED slowly, precisely,
bearing down with unnecessary
vigor at the end of each calculated
stroke. He had to stand on tiptoe to
reach the back of the bureau. He
glanced over his shoulder, now and
again to be sure the colonist was ob-
serving the mechanics of dusting. He
held a semi-transparent globe to the
light, turned it this way and that,
wrinkling his face in intent inspection.
He rubbed it briskly, examined it in
the light again, and at length reluctant-
ly returned it to the table. He was ex-
ceedingly careful to see that each ob-
ject went back precisely as it had
been — as if he wished to avoid the
reprimand that might occur if one
were disarranged. His hands moved
with unaccustomed gentleness.

The silence had been unbroken.

He replaced the sash in the drawer.
“You could do it.”

“I must remember,” Matuska said.

And so "they came together — each
an outcast from his own world: the
one newly-awakened to an awareness
of beauty, and possessed of a curiosity
that time and events had relegated to
his long-forgotten ancestors; the other,
searching and sick at heart, believing
that the commitment to proliferation
of his fellows was merely a desperate,
futile, and lonely protest against the
long night of eternity, needing to com-
municate to someone across the multi-
ple barriers of alienness his primeval,
vast and bottomless longing. The two
of them, aliens and strangers, met and

INNY BEGAN to
come regularly to the
compound and to
Matuska’s room.
Within a month, it
was not unusual for
him to arrive short-
ly after the colonist
left for his work in
the morning, to re-
main within the
room (eating a noon meal of dried
meats and roots there) until shortly
before Matuska’s return at dusk. He
spent the time cleaning and reclean-
ing everything within the four walls,
until the wood of the furniture glis-
tened from his polishing; the floors
gleamed; and the often-handled orna-
ments, and ever more numerous pic-
tures (which Matuska began to pur-
chase from other colonists) sparkled —
until there was about the room a
brightness and a freshness and a
warmth that could not be found else-
where upon the, planet.

They were aware of each other’s
occupancy of the room; a little of
them both was combined and trans-
muted within the silent walls, so that
at first they seemed to draw more
closely together as the days progressed.
But they seldom saw each other; they
seldom spoke; soon their relationship
assumed a static quality.

Once, when Matuska came in early,
Kinny was fingering the binding of one
of the books and puzzling over the
tightly-printed symbols of the text.

DUST THOU ART . . .

Matuska said, “I will explain these,
the books, the use of books. .

Kinny returned the book to the
shelf. “I have seen what there is to
see. We no longer make them, since
they serve no purpose.”

And again, not too long afterwards,
Matuska noticed that the native had
taken nothing further by way of pay-
ment, and he delayed until Kinny ar-
rived. He opened the jewel-case he was
holding and removed the largest of the
irridescent lava rocks. “For you,” he
said, extending it.

Appreciation flickered in Kinny’s
eyes; but the native turned from the
gift and began to finger over the re-
maining stones, finally selecting one
of the smallest — as if he could have
taken any or all of them. “This has
caught my eye. I will take it.” Only
for an instant did he glance back at
the one Matuska held, and then he
dropped his choice into his fur-piece.
Recently he had sewn in, crudely to
be sure, a bit of leather as a pocket.

One afternoon — Kinny had been
coming regularly for over a month
now — Matuska returned while Kinny
was still in the room. He watched the
native for a moment, then he said,
“You are careful never to change the
arrangement of the furniture.”

Kinny blinked his eyes dumbly.

“You may if you wish. You have my
permission; I don’t mind. Variety is
good.”

It seemed to Matuska that their fail-
ure at some undefined point to pro-
gress further in understanding each
other had come to be symbolized by
the unvarying sameness of the room.

Kinny turned without answer and
was gone. Matuska, in stunned incom-
prehension, heard his feet hurrying
along the corridor with heavy, disap-
proving slaps, and he wanted to cry
out in anguish, “Come back! Come
back!” He wanted to run after him
and apologize for the insult, even
though he could not understand the
nature of it.

He felt futility and bitterness, con-
fusion and hurt, betrayal and sorrow
remembering how final the feet had
sounded as they fled from him.

CNOW CAME; Matuska daily hoped
for Kinny’s return and was daily
disappointed. The vocal messages he
entrusted to the females were unan-
swered; perhaps even undelivered. His
sense of loneliness increased. He need-
ed Kinny’s reassuring if enigmatic
presence. The other colonists became
more disapproving of his interest in
the natives. He was afraid they might
even forbid the females access to the
compound. The other colonists were in-
terested in only one goal: planting the
colony firmly and assuring its survival.
Matuska wanted to scream curses
against the irony of each new building
they erected. Watching the natives
troop silently to bury their dead, he
wanted to cry to his fellows, “See!
They know! They build no walls
against eternity! They know, they un-
derstand!”

Perhaps a messsage was delivered;
perhaps the secret needs overcame the
ir.sult. At any rate, Kinny returned.
The snow was a deepening blanket
now.

Matuska did not see him the first
day. The new sparkle of the furniture
informed of his return. Matuska was
afraid to wait for him tire next morn-
ing; he dreaded the first meeting,
dreaded that he might give some new
and unintentional insult, even in the
manner of his greeting, that would
send the native away forever and re-
store the colonist’s isolation.

It was three days later that Kinny
was waiting when he returned from
work. The native nodded and stepped
to the middle of the room. He regarded
the arrangement of the furniture crit-
ically. “I will move this,” he said as
if the idea suddenly occurred to him.
Then he began to move furniture
frantically, pulling and hauling it this
way and that — trying to place it in

FUTVHE Science Fiction

some order so that it would be superior
to (it was plain he did not understand
in what way such things are judged)
to the prior arrangement. The muscles
in his forearms and back rippled with
the effort, and he grunted heavily, lift-
ing, pushing, displaying, his strength . . .

•

Shortly the snow lay deep; it was a
huge, endless whiteness upon the for-
est; it piled against trees and spread
across the thick ice of the river. The
tree-limbs creaked with snow and
snapped brittlely and fell, trailing
streamers of whiteness, and plunged
silently into the cushion below.

Crude stoves in the villages burned
defiantly against the cold. Natives
flickered from house to house like
wasted shadows. Beyond what little
security was there, their world lay in
drab hostility. Hunts went out daily
and often came back with nothing.

Kinny’s face was gaunt.

Matuska wanted to explain that the
colonists were not permitted to dis-
pense their food-stores; that the silos
stood for those to follow and their wel-
fare could not be mortgaged to allevi-
ate native suffering; a new sense of
shame, perhaps as much as fear of
offense, made him keep silent. Slowly
he came to feel that it was his respon-
sibility to lessen their suffering. It was
a frightening thought; his compassion
and sorrow filled him with a nameless
brooding and discontent. Ignoring the
disapproval of his co-colonists, he took
a morning from his work. He -was
polishing his hand-weapon with an
oily cloth when Kinny began to stamp
the snow off his fur-wrapped feet out-
side the door.

“I will go hunting,” he said without
looking up.

Kinny went to the drawer for his
dust-rag. He shrugged indifferently.

Matuska dreaded the cold and ex-
haustion to follow. He lingered as long
as he felt decently he could in the
warmth of the room.

At the door he found Kinny, his
face eager, just behind him. “I will go
with you.”

Outside, Kinny hopped about nerv-
ously, making animal sounds of excite-
ment deep in his throat. His breath
billowed hotly before his face.

Leaping across the snow, almost to
its belly, came Kinny’s mongrel,
yapping in shrill joy. The native
rubbbed the dog’s head and silenced
its clamor by strangely-affectionate
words. Shivering, then, the animal
turned and ranged ahead of them. And
the three of them, the dog leading,
Kinny in the rear, plunged into the
white forest.

Passing on the ridge above the vil-
lage, Kinny had to call the log in. It
had started to race down the slope (it
seemed almost too great an expenditure
of energy for such a sickly body) to
where :> female native was driving two
cows before her.

They hunted nearly all morning be-
fore they jumped a fawn. Matuska’s
feet had become leaden and icy; his
lungs labored painfully against the air
that cut like glass slivers. The fawn
flashed fleetly beyond arrow-range,
within a heartbeat. But the sharp
splat of Matuska’s weapon did not
send an arrow,, and the fawn stum-
bled and collapsed while Kinny held
the mongrel, lunging desperately in its
desire to fall on the kill.

Matuska approached and soberly
poked the cooling carcass with his
toe. “You may have it.” He watched
Kinny’s reactions. Kinny shuffled his
feet in the snow and panted wetly
above the blood-odored kill. “We
have no need of it,” he said, and they
left it lying there, taming the snow
dark beneath its body.

Within the hour they shot two does
and a rabbit. They left the does. Kin-
ny fed the rabbit to the dog. “I over-
looked to bring his food,” he apolo-
gized. “If we always left all of the
kill, the dogs would not long survive

DUST THOU ART . . .

to run more game. They are very val-
uable.”

Matuska struggled to conceal his
exhaustion. Each breath seemed fire.
He stumbbled. “It is enough for to-
day.”

On the way back to the compound,
they stopped once to rest. While Ma-
tuska leaned heavily against a tree,
Kinny capered impatiently behind him.

T/TNNY PARTED from the colonist
at the gate and trotted toward the
village, hurrying, Matuska knew, to re-
trieve the kill for his tribe before
wild animals picked the bones clean.
Matuska could not understand the
frustrating indirections of their every
relationship.

Thereafter he hunted once each
week. He forced himself to work long-
er hours in the colony to make up for
the time. He saw Kinny only on hunt-
days.

On the fourth hunt, heart throbbing
desperately he said, “Tell me. Why
do you bury an animal with each
corpse?” He held his breath, for fear
that even such a harmless question
might constitute an insult. His grow-
ing need for the physical presence of
the native made him almost afraid to
talk at all. And yet, in that burial-
ritual, he seemed to catch a whisper of
assurance: if he could only understand
it completely, he felt that he would
never need feel alone again.

“It is natural; it must be done.”

Matuska judged the tone. There was
no hostility in it.

On the next hunt he asked: “Why
must you bury an animal with each
corpse; why must it be done?”

“It must.”

“Yes, but why? If it must be done,
how is it that we do not do it also?”

“But why should you?” Kinny said.
“Let us go.” He waited for Matuska
to move. “Why should you?” he cried
happily . . .

4 .

N LATE January
there was a brief
period of freak
warm weather, when
the snow melted
.rapidly, during
which the natives
organized a great
animal-hunt. Kinny
was gone for three
days.

Matuska knew the hunt had ended
when the cymbals in the village an-
nounced a death. Many native hunts
ended in that fashion.

Kinny came the same morning. It
was one of Matuska’s rare free days.

All morning Kinny did not speak.
He was listless at his cleaning; he
stared frequently out the window and
across the compound.

Matuska watched him mutely and
helplessly. At last he asked softly:
“The cymbals? They were for a
friend?”

“For a careless fool; I have no
friends.”

“But you are sad?”

“ ... In the night, my animal died.
I went this morning to feed him and
he was dead.”

“I am sorry.”

Kinny said nr hing.

“You must get another one.”

Slowly Kinny shook his head. “They
will not give me another.”

“But why?”

“There are only so many. It has
been a hard winter on most of our
animals.” He moved to the bed and
sat down. It was one of the few times
he had sat in Matuska’s presence. He
began to sob dryly, without shame. “I
have nothing else.”

Matuska realized how deeply he had
become attached to the native. He
wanted desperately to comfort him.
“Have you no female?”

“No, I.., No. Nothing."

FVTVttE Science Fiction

Matuska waved his gaunt hands
helplessly. He bent forward and spoke
softly. “They blame you for coming
here? Is it that?”

“Why should they?” Kinny demand-
ed. “I go where I wish.” Tears glis-
tened on his cheeks. “I will come back
tomorrow.” He stood and was gone.

Matuska had not realized the depth
of affection they could develop for
even an animal. This revelation — when
he remembered their burial-practice —
left him chilled and afraid. He had
long ago forced the comprehensive
evidence of their savagery oat of his
mind treating each instance of it as a
sad but unique phenomenon. He had
not really understood its extent; but
now, belatedly, as understanding be-
gan to grow, he felt somehow personal-
ly responsible — as he felt responsible
for their winter misery. The discontent
that came with sorrow and compassion
increased in intensity.

The full, blinding light of insight
came early in February; it dissolved
all things into perspective.

Throughout his association with the
natives he had come to take for grant-
ed the absolute degree to which they
could be trusted. They were careful
never to take unacknowledged pay-
ment for their work unless he were
present.

He had therefore been surprised to
see the jacket missing from his closet.
Kinny had nwer taken anything but
objects of aesthetic appeal. And since,
just the day before, he had taken a
vase (to brood over it, unknown to
Matuska, by the dying fire until chill
and lateness drove him to the robes
and sleep), it was unlikely that he
had also taken the jacket.

Matuska discovered the jacket was
missing as he dressed for the hunt.
Shrugging, he put on the less warm
one.

“Your other jacket?” Kinny asked.

“. . .it is not here.”

Kinny’s lips tightened . . .

That evening, after he had rested

from .the exertion of the day, Matuska
went out to inspect again the ruins
lying under the new-fallen snow. It
was a clear, moonlight night. Beyond
the forest, there was a splash of small
animal-tracks where once cars had
moved, and natives walked proud with
power and civilization. A lonesome owl
called throatily, to send field-mice
scampering.

Looking at the past lying before
him, Matuska wanted to erect some
eternal monument to deny imper-
manence. But he knew how impossible
that would be. The sun itself would
fade; all before him would vanish.
There was nothing in the universe but
defeat and irony. The cities of even
his own race would grow cold and dead
and crumble. As would all works all
dreams, everything . . .

He stood motionless for a long time
in the frosty air. He turned away at
last and skirted the native cemetery
—still ageless and timeless, but as
impermanent in the cosmic scale as
snow is in sunlight. Beyond it he
could see the sparkle of lights in the
colony and hear (if he ceased walk-
ing: his feet made brittle crunches
breaking through the frozen crust) if
he listened closely, the hum and throb
of the generator within the central
compound.

TT WAS early February, 2991 now,
and Matuska’s last winter here.
Limb-shattered moonlight lay across
the snow.

Panting thinly, he stood on the
slight rise and looked down at the
native village, monochromatic and life-
less with sleep. After long minutes he
noticed the iron dark drops in the
snow, almost at his feet. They trailed
to the right, complimenting a set of
shuffling tracks that came up from be-
low.

Skin prickling with dread, his eyes
resting on them with terrible fascina-
tion, he followed the drops until he
came to a female, naked, frozen, hud-

DUST THOU ART . . .

died in the snow, her body a mass of
savage welts that could only have been
administered by a community lashing.
Her face was pillowed sleepily against
her arm, and snow glistened in her stiff
black hair. Why, the colonist thought
in horror, it is the one wl came to the
compound just yesterday; I gave her a
blue and orange blanket from the
■warehouse... Heartsick, he turned
away.

Tears formed in his eyes. He shud-
dered to think that this was the ul-
timate consequence of the knowledge
he shared with the natives: savagery.
He wanted to wring his hands in
agony.

It seemed to him then — and this
was his insight — that even the self-
delusion of building was preferrable.
Truth was not as important as false-
hood; : gnorance was a shield against
suicide. He suddenly hoped that his
own race would never discover the
pathetic futility of erecting walls
against the long night of eternity. He
wanted to cry out: Never leave the
cities! There is a love and a goodness
in them! Because of that, they are
worth while! Because of what they
prevent, they are worth while! You
must never leave them! Hear me!
Hear me! You must never . . .

The next morning, Kinny returned
the jaket. “I have no use for it. You
may have it back.”

Matuska’s hand trembled.

“We do not want to take too much,”
Kinny said. ‘ We must see that you
retain enough for your own needs.”

“I saw a dead female in the forest
last night,” Matuska said softly.

Kinny’s eyes did not meet his. “She
was accused of stealing from her
neighbor.” He hesitated. “There are
some things we must not steal ...” He
shuffled his feet. “Her whole family
should have received the same,” he
said defiantly.

Matuska said nothing. He went to
the window, opened it, and breathed
the clean air that seemed to promise
spring.

CPRING came early.

^ Out in the r.ew air, Kinny
hopping slightly to his rear, Matuska
asked gently, “The rest do not approve
of you talking to me. Why are you
all so distant from us?”

Swaggering with warmth and vital-
ity, Kinny seemed not to hear.

“Your people cannot control a male
like they can the females, isn’t that
right? Isn’t that why they don’t like
for you to come? They’re afraid that,
if you work for us, you may accident-
ally reveral the secret.” He felt a lump
rise in his throat. “You don’t want to
see it destroy our cities, too. You. . .”
Kinny broke stride. “I do not work
for you,” he slid. He walked a few
steps in silence, bent for a rock, sent
it whirling away in a long arc, waited
for it to ricochet from the tree-trunk.
“I do not work for you. . . You are
very useful, and yet it is all so... so
difficult. . . ”

“What do yo#mean?”

Kinny turned away from him then:
not in anger, merely no longer w'ishing
to be bothered with questions. “I do
as I please,” he called back to the

FUTURE Science Fiction

colonist. He walked proudly, defiantly,
master of the planet: that was the
important thing.

Matuska felt a lump continue to
tighten in his throat.

•

He felt drawn to the ruins. He went
as often as he could. He dug just
beyond the first broad cross street in
the foundation of a forgotten building.
He uncovered a queer piece of elec-
trical equipment. He could not under-
stand its function. He cleaned it until
it shined and placed it on his table.
He pointed it out to Kinny, and waved
his hands, and tried to explain how he
felt.

“They made many useless things
long ago,” Kinny said. “We do not
bother with them any more.”

“Don’t you see. . . I understand.”
Matuska protested. “It’s not necessary
to pretend. I know; I understand why
you left the cities. You can talk freely
to me.” It seemed to Matuska that he
had lived with the horrible knowledge
for so long that he was the father of
it. He felt a great love for the natives,
and a great desire to undo the disaster
that the knowledge (and he himself,
indirectly and unwittingly) had caused.
And strangely he was no longer alone.

“You must listen, Kinny. We’re all
wrong. Not wrong. I mean. . .” Words
struggled to rise. He had to convey not
only the idea but all the undercurrents
of it. He had to convey his emotions.
“You’ve got to regain your faith in
the cities. Turn away from truth; stop
looking at its hideous face. Stop it,
stop it. Realit; doesn’t matter; it’s the
dream and the delusion that mat-
ters. . . You’ve got to understand this,
Kinny.”

“There’s nothing to understand,”
Kinny said.

“Listen, listen, listen . . . I’ve got to
make you believe this. Before I leave.

I’m going to leave very soon now.
You’ve got to find meaning again.
There’s so little time left; that’s
the...”

Kinny suddenly appeared agitated.
“You are going to leave?”

“Yes. I’ve got to leave, now that
my work is done. I have so little time
left...”

And Kinny, as if some hidden barri-
er were suddenly lowered — some un-
vocalized, even unadmitted necessity
removed — went to the colonist and
began to pat his head and caress his
skin and croon softly to him in rhyth-
mic, non-sense syllables.

Matuska was motionless with un-
comprehending amazement.

And the native voice from the door-
way came with sharp disapproval: “We
should not become fond of them. You
should go away now r .”

Kinney jumped back and whirled
guiltily. Matuska, waiting with his
heart in his throat, breathed almost
soundleassly.

Kinny turned back to the colonist.
“I do as I please.” He touched the
colonist’s head. “This one is going
away.”

As if the emotions he was showing
might entail some abhorrent obliga-
tion, the female said, “One must watch
one’s feeling. The Chieftain will not
like it.”

And then, for a moment, they both
seemed puzzled. Something had been
put into words, some moral commit-
ment expressed, that they knew to be
correct; but they could not understand
the reason for dreading. They knew
that the Chieftain would disapprove
equally of Kinny’s conduct, without
knowing any more than themselves
whence his disapproval arose.

“It is natural,” Kinny said belliger-
ently, stroking Matuska’s shoulder.
“Let me alone.”

Ji/FATUSKA saw him only twice
more. Once alive — the next day,

DUST THOU ART . . .

the day preceeding the native hunt—
and once dead at the cemetery.

The day after the hunt, Matuska
awakened to the cymbals at dawn. Ha
lay listening on the brink of sleep
until he was roused by the loud rattling
at his door. He aros' to answer It.

A strange native wns standing fear-
lessly in the dim, morning-cool corri-
dor. His face was infinitely weary. And
he stepped uninvited across the thres-
hold as if across the barrier between
life and death.

“Kinny was killed in the hunt.”

Shocked by the sudden impact of
sickness and sorrow, Matuska moved
his lips soundlessly.

“Come,” the native said sternly.

Matuska’s mind hummed dully with
disbelief. There was the sense of un-
reality that always crowds upon the
knowledge of final, personal loss. It
was impossible that Kinny’s awkward
arms were stilled; they had been so
alive and active. “I will come immedi-
ately.”

Sad, trembling now, his face
wrinkled, almost crying, the native
said, “Hurry. We are waiting to Dury
him.” The voice was unsteady. With
sudden shame, he squared his shoul-
ders as the master of the planet
should.

And drawing his wrap around him,
still in his night robe, Matuska pre-
pared to leave. Grief and bitterness
and defeat filled him. The gravity
clawed at him with lifeless fingers. He
tried to tell himself that even with
Kinny dead, even in the few remaining
weeks he had left on the planet, he
could still somehow convince the
natives to return to their cities.

Matuska unarmed and unsuspect-
ing, preceeded the native down the
corridor to the funeral-dirge of cym-
bals, heard from the direction of the
cemetery, like the far-off, brassy
throbbing of a giant heart.

★

you Won't Want *1o Mui lltU Novel

Many readers have suggested that
we run a complete, new book-length
novel, occasionally.

Not a reprint; not an abridged
“magazine version" — but a full
hard - cover edition, In advance of book - publication.

* And her e It one of the most unusual science-fiction novels wo
have teen In many years

by JAMES BUSH (author of "Testament of Andros")
and MICHAEL SHERMAN (author of "A Matter of Faith")

Don't mitt thh full vtrtlon of their newest nova/

THE DUPLICATED MAN

It appears In the big August Issue of

DYNAMIC SCIENCE FICTION

Let us pause for a moment to consider the havoc
that our favorite reading-matter may cause some-
things, somewhen . . .

Mr. Pwrert tried to get a word in edgewise . . .

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

by Harry Warner, Jr.

(illustrated by Tom Beechom}

HE GIRL asked,
“Are you planning
another vacation so
soon, Mrs. Pwrert?
You really must be
getting the urge for
space-hopping.”

“I am not plan-
ning another vaca-
tion, young lady,”
Mrs. Pwrert snapped
at the smiling receptionist in the of-
fice of Worlds Wide Travel Agency.
“Mr. Pwrert wants to lodge a strong
complaint about our last vacation.”
The receptionist’s smile narrowed
from cordiality to politeness, as she
looked at the large Mrs. Pwrert, and
small Mr. Pwrert at her heels. The re-
ceptionist selected a complicated form
from a desk drawer, and said: “If
you’ll just have a chair, Mr. Pwrert

can tell me what went wrong, and I’ll
investigate.”

Mr. Pwrert opened one of his
mouths, but he was too late. Mrs.
Pwrert declared: “We were frightened
to death. We were just starting to re-
lax at the resort when we read that
war had broken out at Alpha Centauri.
We have relatives there, so Mr. Pwrert
spent a small fortune in ethergrams
to find out if they were safe. Well,
they not only were safe, but there
wasn’t any war. The emotion-dampers
were working perfectly all over the
Alpha Centauri system; we’d been
hoaxed.”

“Oh, it was something that hap-
pened while you were at the resort —
not during your trip?” The reception-
ist’s brow started to go around in cir-
cles.

“Yes. Moreover, after we’d been
there — ”

“I’ll refer you to the person who
planned your resort-accommodations,”
the receptionist said, relievedly. “This
form covers only your traveling-ex-
periences.”

The tour-manager exuded good will
and personal magnetism, basking in
the mauve light that streamed through
the windows from the twin suns. It
found a comfortable chair for Mrs.
Pwrert.

Mr. Pwrert was about to say that
he would like a chair, too, when Mrs.
Pwrert erupted: “You sold us that
vacation by telling us that we’d be
free from worries, that we’d get a
complete rest in rural surroundings,
away from all the galactic squabbles.
What happens? We nearly have a nerv-
ous-breakdown, because some yellow
journalist wrote a fake war-story to
try to boost circulation.”

The tour-manager waved its foot in
placating fashion. “Now, Mrs. Pwrert,
you really should forget the news while
you’re vacationing. W riters often don’t
have the highest standards in such out-
of-the-way areas as we have in civiliza-
tion.”

“Then it’s high time the standards
were raised. We had more than one
unpleasant experience of the kind. We
read about an interesting race of giant
lobsters on the very next planet in the
system, so we paid for a side-trip on
our way back home. There weren’t
even any little lobsters there; it was
a dead world.

“Now, what Mr. Pwrert wants to
know, is why there isn’t an honest,
respectable press in a resort for which
you arrange vacations.”

The tour-manager looked hurt.
“Mrs. Pwrert, I’m really surprised.
You must remember that you picked
that resort simply because of its na-
tive, unspoiled charm. We asked you
folks to remain in the background, not
to make yourselves known as foreign-
ers, so the same charm could be pre-

served from year to year. How can we
mix into the publishing business and
still keep the charm of the resort? If
we interfere in a few things, pretty
soon the resort would be just as vul-
gar and commercialized as Vega III.
A couple of your taste — ”

“Does all that simply mean that
you won’t give us a rebate for the
money we wasted?” Mrs. Pwrert’s lip
flashed.

“You must see the director concern-
ing rebates,” the tour-manager said,
politely but finally. “Three doors down
and to the left,” it pointed. “Tell the
secretary that I sent you to Mr. Vluv.”

Mr. Pwrert’s eyes broadened. “Mr.
VI — ” he began.

“ — uv!” Mrs. Pwrert completed.
“Why, that’s an old friend of Mr.
Pwrert’s. He’ll give us satisfaction!”

JV/fR. VLUV greeted Mr. Pwrert
warmly, and bounced heads with
Mrs. Pwrert in more formal fashion.
Then he listened attentively to the
couple’s misfortunes.

“I’ll admit frankly that you aren’t
the first person to complain about this
resort,” he told Mrs. Pwrert. “We
used to average a hundred-thousand
vacationists each year on that excur-
sion. But so many are coming back
angry, that demand for the tour is
dropping off. The natives are amus-
ing; the food is good; the weather ex-
citing; the scenery unique. But the
news — ”

Mr. Pwrert nodded emphatically.
Mrs. Pwrert said: “Why don’t you
deliver some reliable publication reg-
ularly for vacationists there?”

“Well, it’s out of the way, to begin
with; and importing the news would
mean using big spaceships that might
attract too much of the natives’ atten-
tion. So we simply supply the editors
with the latest facts, and let them do
the publishing. . . I’ll tell you what;
you come back to see me next spring,
and I’ll give you a big discount on

FUTUItE Science Fiction

the next Coal-Sack cruise. Think you’d
like that?”

“I’d — ” Mr. Pwrert said. Mrs.
Pwrert took hint by the middle arm.
“We’ll decide,” she said. The couple
stalked out.

Mr. Vluv pushed a button, sighing.
The tour-manager responded prompt-
ly. Mr. Vluv motioned for it to squat.
“We’ll have to de-emphasize our Earth
excursion,” Mr. Vluv told it sadly. “I
hate to do that, because it’s a profit-
able tour. But it’s giving Worlds Wide
Travel Agency a bad name, just be-
cause of those fake accounts of in-
ventions and interplanetary affairs.”

“When did this trouble start?” the
tour-manager asked.

“Oh, six or eight years ago. Earth
magazines used to pay us for the facts
and published the facts as fiction; our
tourists bought the magazines to keep
up to date on what the galaxy is doing,
and everything was fine.

“Then for some reason the Earth-
natives started to buy these same mag-
azines, and some of them assumed that
the science-fiction stories really were
fiction — and started to write similar
accounts out of their own imaginations.

“The editors mixed those fictional
accounts with our news-reports with-
out any distinguishing marks. Then, to
make things worse, some of the na-
tives started to read the magazines,
too. They bought so many copies that
a lot of new magazines were started,
and we can’t even fill the demand for
accounts. So we can’t crowd out the
fake stories with our superior factual
accounts. Our tourists never know
whether to believe any given story or
not. . .

“Oh, to Hxewrt with it! I’m going
to try to forget the whole thing. I feel
like I need a vacation. . .”

★

Here Are 3 Novelets You'll Want to Re-read!

I M DREADFUL THERAPY by Bryce Walton
I * COMMON TIME by James Blish
I * CHARACTERISTICS UNUSUAL by Randall Garrett
I These, and other

stories appear in
the August issue of

SCIENCE FICTION

QUARTERLY

FOR NEW THRILLS — LOOK TO TOMORROW!

From all corners of th« galaxy they came to watch
this birth, to watch, to search, and to fear.

STAND WATCH IN THE

A Strange, Unusual Tale by Algis

( illustrated by Milton Luros )

A beaked and leathery thing flapped from the space in front of them . . .

ADIA SILENTLY found a
place beside the others.

As always, there seemed to
be so many stars. They cradled her,
held her, surrounded her with silver
dagger-points. Ladia shrank within
herself and faced the spinning world
below her. She came from the Rim.
Even here, so far from the great
Central Cluster, the sky was too full
of alien stars. She could not look at

them for long without feeling that
she was a stranger here; someone with
no business in this corner of space.

Here — or anywhere ? she thought,
and looked at the others. They stood
confidently, close together. And yet,
with each group there was somehow
the feeling that it stood apart, that
there were borders and demarcations,
that this was not one unit of — how
many were there, counting herself? —

FUTURE Science Fiction

twelve? — parts, but a loose assem-
blage. From each group there was an
almost shouted statement: “We are we.
We are rulers. Do not trespass against
us.” So, though they stood together,
the representatives of the Six Peoples
stood apart.

I stand apart, too, she realized, but
I stand as my kind has stood for so
long — marked by our weakness.

The Six Peoples, she thought. Once
it was Seven. Yes, and once her peo-
ple had not been a timid remnant, clus-
tered on a handful of worlds that
clung to the scattered suns of the Gal-
axy’s edge.

She swept her glance along the
group.

Beside her stood two of the Water-
worlders, their heads encased in bulky,
transparent tanks of the fluid which
was their source of oxygen. The Wa-
terworlders. Wherever there was a
planet wrapped in deep seas, there
were the Waterworlders, with their
coral cities draped in traceries of sea-
grass, touched with polychrome sun-
bursts of anemone.

Beyond these, a Sirian. Cold, soli-
tary thing, what will you find here to
measure with your instruments? When
your people find no more to measure,
Sirian, what will they do? But that
time would not be soon in coming.
There was much left to be weighed
and charted and entered, in this Gal-
axy alone. The people of the Sirian
suns would calibrate the Universe for
many, many years.

The Aldebars stood heavily together.
Squat, unhelmeted, unbreathing, some
said they were robots. No one knew,
and the Aldebars themselves said noth-
ing. They merely conquered, coming
in hordes out of the depth of space,
brutal, smashing, ravaging. Their
senseless empire stretched far to all
sides of their parent sun.

Two of the cats stood beyond them.
The male was armed.

Ladia wondered at that. The Aide-
bars would have seemed incomplete

without their weapons, but the cat. . . ?
She glanced at the inevitable Danae
opposite her, and saw that the man,
too, cradled a slim projector in his
arms.

She smiled. So, cat, if what comes
from this planet is not feline, you will
try to kill it? And the Danae — the
great, overlordly Danae — will kill you
to preserve their kind of justice. She
smiled bitterly.

Between the cats and the graceful
Danae couple stood two of the an-
droids. Cast in flesh, they stood like
twin statues with hungry faces. There
was a legend. The androids tracked
it endlessly.

Millenia, Ladia thought. Millenia of
holding to your territories, vat-born
creatures — and still you search. Do you
think you’ll find your makers here?

And then, the Danae. The Danae
were everywhere, aloof, impassive. The
self-selected overseers of the Galaxy,
pursuing some plan, following some
purpose none could guess. They came,
dictated, and their commands were
obeyed. Blindly, without attempt at
question. The peoples of the Galaxy
had long ago learned that the Dana
word was Law.

The Dana woman looked across the
semicircle of figures and saw her. tier
lips curved into a faint smile.

“A Teischa girl,” she whispered.
“And alone ...” The delicate brows
curved upward. “Tell me, Teischa vir-
gin, are you a gift to the god who stirs
below? Will you bribe your people into
alliance with him? Say, Rimdweller —
do you want your suns back?”

A bubbling titter echoed from the
Waterworlders beside Ladia; the cats
glanced at her silkily; the androids
turned their hungry, ironical faces to-
ward her. Only the Aldebars and the
Sirian made no sign.

The Dana man laughed. “Let her be,
Tyri,” he said. “It is enough for her
already, to know she’s on a hopeless
mission.”

“Hopeless, eh?” the male cat

STAND WATCH IN THE SKY

growled unexpectedly. “Because you’ll
tell it what to do?” His claws clicked
on the metalwork of his weapon.

“Down, puss,” the Dana woman
murmured. The female cat arched her
back almost visibly.

“Words!” the Sirian abruptly said,
its voice driven in like the point of a
spike. “Listen, instead. Feel!”

The group fell silent.

Beat.

Like a racing comber, the wave from
the planet below reached out and broke
over them.

Beat.

Again the racing telepathic tide
washed up, struck them, and rolled on,
flooding- out and filling all space.

T ADIA SAW the stars overcast, as
■*-' the almost solid force of those
waves radiated out of the world that
hung under their feet. Even the sun
was momentarily dim to her senses.

The Waterworlders gasped. The Sir-
ian nodded, its lips pulled back in a
lupine, fascinated smile. The cats re-
coiled, spitting; the androids leaned
forward, their faces eager. The Aide-
bars gave no outward sign, but only
the Danae were truly imperturbable.

“Formless,” the Dana man said
casually and comtemptuously. “A
baby’s babbling.”

“Were you such a baby?” the Sirian
asked drily.

“Perhaps.”

“I doubt it.”

The Dana man raised his weapon
almost negligently.

The Sirian shifted the instrument in
its hand. “The emission would be ana-
lyzed and telemetered,” it said casual-
ly. “We would know the secret of
your weapon, and then you would have
to go to all the trouble of inventing a
new one.”

The Waterworlders laughed as the
Dana lowered his projector again, but
stopped suddenly as he absently turned
it toward them.

The old, familiar, bitter smile of

her people came to Ladia’s lips. The
gods squabble, she thought. And over
what? A miracle is taking place on
that world — that planet, Earth — and
each of them sees in it no more than
something to be taken and used to
further whatever plans and desires
each has.

On Earth, a telepathic mutant had
been born — and the first, faintest rip-
ples of its dawning consciousness had
been the pulsing signal that had called
them here.

• For the Waterworlders, here was
water — mile on mile on cubic mile of
it, deeps and chasms, caverns and can-
yons. If the Earthman let them come — ■
or, perhaps, if it was too weak to re-
sist them. Who knew?

For the Sirian, a fledgling science.
Atomic fission and fusion. Rocketry,
cybernetics — a million familiar path-
ways trod again, and perhaps, with
this race, a stone of discovery turned
that had never before, in all the Gal-
axy, been touched.

The Aldebars? She frowned. Con-
quest? This one planet, so far from
the rest of their holdings? But, ob-
viously, they had a purpose here.

And here, on a world where genus
felis lived side by side with the simian
offshoots, might the telepath not be a
cat?

And always, always when a new race
reached awareness, the androids came
with their hungry faces. A new race?
Or one that had risen once before, long
ago, and sent the offspring of their
biological vats a-wandering into the
stars?"

The Danae. As constant as the an-
droids. Ruling, regulating, overseeing.

And she. Ladia sighed. She, too. A
bribe for the god? No, rather, a suppli-
cant. For help, for comradeship — ad-
mit it, for any crumb she could beg,
so long as the Teischa people could
lift their heads even so much as a frac-
tion higher.

She sighed again. Poor babe. You’ll

FVTLIIF Science Fiction

learn that even supermen are tools for
supermen.

'T'HE ANDROIDS stirred. “Look at
-*■ the moon,” one of them said. “See
the craters? Argue for asteroid-show-
ers, would you?”

The male cat twitched an ear dis-
dainfully.

“The belt of asteroids, then!” the
other, female, android cried. “You’d
deny an interplanetary war? There
was another civilization in this system,
I tell you!” Her entire body quivered
with her vehemence.

“And, so?” the male cat said with
boredom. “Likely as not, if this is the
system of your origin, mind you, you
were brewed on the destroyed planet.”
He rasped his claws up the thigh of
his heavy suit.

“Brewed!” The male android leaped
forward.

“PEACE!” The lance of the Dana
projector stabbed between the two
males and hung there, deadly.

Only Ladia heard the Sirian’s tiny
exhalation. She saw the dial of its ana-
lyzer quiver, and only she looked to
see the faint twitch of satisfaction on
its lips. It looked up at her suddenly,
across the intervening space. She
smiled, and the Sirian flicked a side-
long glance at the oblivious Danae,
and then smiled back.

“One less Overlord secret,” it whis-
pered for her alone.

The Aldebars had turned toward the
cause of the disturbance. “All intelli-
gence fights,” one of them rumbled.
“A previous civilization might have
been. Maybe they spawned pseudolife
and maybe not. What matter? They
were like us. They fought.”

From the Aldebars, the androids
took the insult without protest.

So. ‘Like us.’ The Aldebars took the
Earthmen’s constant wars for a sign
of a belligerent race, and hoped that
even a super-Earthman would share
that heritage. What will you do if he
tarns on you?

“Look under the largest sea,” one
of the persistent androids was saying.
“There are cities under that water —
roads, walls, temples. All broken, all
in ruins — but there!”

The cats had fallen back into vel-
vet inscrutability. They yawned at the
androids.

“Cities?” The Waterworlder woman
searched eagerly, but her mate laid a
restraining flipper on her arm.

“Not ours,” he said shortly. “Not
yet.”

The Sirian interrupted. “An older
civilization, yes — but a primitive one.
Look closer. Hand-cut, clumsily levered
and pulleyed stone piled on stone with
the blood of slaves to bind the mortar.
You’ll find no space-travelers among
the aborigines that built there.” It
smiled, baring its wolfish teeth.
“Would you care to see the true for-
mer rulers of Earth? Look, then!”

The vibrating aura of its conscious-
ness bloomed out and enfolded them,
and they saw into the past with its
mind.

Jungles exploded into green and
howling life. Tarpits bubbled, and
shrouds of stinking steam drifted in
layers among the giant ferns and
through the loops of the writhing
creepers.

Ladia gasped. What nightmare of
the Sirian’s mind was this?

“No nightmare, little Teischa,” the
Sirian’s whisper touched her. “This is
how it was. And this, too, that I will
show you now, also could have been. I
show you a real world, and real crea-
tures.”

The jungle wall erupted. A huge and
desperate thing, clad in the mail of
its own hide, trampled into a clearing
and whirled clumsily, at bay.

Its face streamed with blood. Great
furrows scored the armor of its flanks,
and blood seeped from under some of
the scales. Swaying hopelessly on its
stumpy legs, it faced the gap its flight
had torn in the interwoven mass of the
forest.

STAND WATCH IN THE SKY

The pack of killers danced out after
it. Smaller, swifter shadows, they
slipped in and out of the mists, spring-
ing from powerful hind legs to slash
and slice with taloned forepaws and
serried teeth.

The harried stegosaur parried fum-
blingly, twisting and rocking as it tried
to keep its armor toward the searching
claws, but the little killer-lizards wove
a pattern of baying death around it.
They cut deeper and deeper, each time
reaching closer to the exhausted life
in the huge and quivering body.

Moaning, the stegosaur collapsed.
The killers danced in, and began to
butcher. A pterodactyl fell out of the
air, smashed its back into the tortured
eyes, twisted, and rose again.

The sightless stegosaur groaned.

T ADIA SCREAMED, and the pic-
■*“' ture broke. All but the Sirian and
the Aldebars shuddered apart.

“So, things — ” the Sirian's scalpel
voice lanced out, “do you claim your
patrimony here?”

The Androids glared whitely at the
Sirian. “Thing yourself,” the female
hissed.

Quivering with rage, the male snarled
at the impassive Sirian. “No,” he said
thickly. “The search goes on. But we
will not leave.” The great shout of his
frustrated voice beat against them all.
“We’ll stay — and see you all in your
disappointment!”

“Poor stegosaur,” Ladia murmured.
“Poor, hunted, helpless thing.” So like
her own people, hemmed in on every
side, a prey to scavengers even before
they were dead.

She reached out her hand, and a
chubby, unarmored little replica of the
murdered stegosaur waddled into being
beside her. It stared up at her with
frightened eyes, and she knelt and
stroked its head. Slowly, its trembling
stopped, and the little creation of her
mind rubbed its flank against her
calf.

Th* Waterworlders recoiled; the

cats laid back their ears, paws twitch-
ing; the Aldebars stared uncompre-
hendingly, and the Danae laughed
cruelly. Only the Sirian smiled.

The bitter faces of the Androids
contorted.

Suddenly, a beaked and leathery
thing flapped from the space in front
of them and whirled at the tiny stego-
saur. “We’ll have none of your mock-
ery, Rimdweller!” the female android
cried.

Ladia’s eyes snapped wide with con-
fusion at the suddenness of the venge-
ful attack. She felt her footing waver
as almost all her energies gathered in
a desperate attempt to halt the on-
coming reptile. But she was alone, and
weak, and the paired strength of the
androids beat her down. She screamed
again and gathered her pet in her
arms. The androids laughed with un-
reasoning triumph. The pterodactyl
clacked its beak and rushed at her.

Unexpectedly, it smashed into a
barrier and fell back, flapping its
wings confusedly.

The Dana man negligently main-
tained the barrier. “Leash them!” he
ordered disdainfully. “If you must have
such playthings, see to it they cause no
disturbances.”

Ladia knew better than to protest.
Silently, she projected a collar and
leash for her bewildered pet. The an-
droids scornfully chained their own
creature.

Beat.

The pulse rocked out of the Earth.

Beat.

And, suddenly borne on the wings
of exultation, a shout: “1 am I!”

Deep within herself, Ladia felt the
echoes of that cry as the force of that
superb revelation washed and washed
against her. There was so much of
soaring human triumph, of pinnacled
aspiration in the mind that had come
into wakefulness on Earth. It was as
though one of her own kind, multi-
plied a score of times, had suddenly
burst from an age-old chrysalis.

FIXTURE Science Fiction

It could have been I that cried so,
she thought in wonder. And, for the
first time, the faintest hopes stirred
within her. She understood that mind,
felt as it felt. Could it be that she
had somehow found a kinsman, a
friend for her people?

The others. What are the others
doing? Her glance dashed around the
grouped semicircle.

“Ahh!” the Sirian sighed with satis-
faction. Its gaze challenged the
Danae. “So, Overlords — an infant?”

The Waterworlders bubbled their
disappointment; the cats were half-
crouched, unsure; the Aldebars stood
rock-like.

The Danae were silent. Never be-
fore could Ladia have thought she
detected the first brushings of tension
tingeing their calm and ice-cold self-
assurance.

“Well, Overlords?” The Sirian’s
voice cut deep.

“SILENCE!”

Was that uncertainty in the Dana
man’s voice?

Beat. And now a questioning, a
probing, rode the wave.

Q UIETLY, Ladia answered along
the radius of the rippling swell.
You are not alone. There are others,
here, in space. Come to us. We are
waiting.

The beating faltered. Not alone ?
Who are you?

The watching group stirred. “Who
contacted it?” the Dana man asked
coldly.

Ladia had no attention for him. She
pictured herself as well as she could,
and sent the image drifting down.

“Answer me! Who?” the Dana de-
manded furiously.

But Ladia could not answer. The
Earthling was talking to her, and it
did not matter if all space heard.

“You? You are out there, waiting
for me? And you’re like me?” The
voice was awestruck. “Someone like
me,” it murmured, “and a girl.”
Beat.

An image rode the swell. A young
face, deep-eyed and eager. “This is
I,” the young man’s voice said.
“Wait for me — please — you — wait for
me!”

“Yes,” Ladia whispered. “Yes, I’ll
wait.”

Beat.

Like a cataract, the thoughts of the
Earthman tumbled over the watchers.
Images — dreams — music, poetry, sun-
sets, all rushed into space and blot-
ted out the stars.

Ladia trembled. She felt the blush
rise to fill her cheeks with happy
scarlet. And, as the Earthman had
felt the bond between them, so did
she. And there were dreams of her
own. Dreams of her people, glorious
again — but more than those, much
more, there were sunsets and music
and poetry.

To be doubly lonely — to belong to
a lonely people, and to be alone my-
self — all my life. To be despised — or,
cruder, to be tolerated. To stand un-
der Dana insidt, to be mocked by
androids — to be a stranger.

And he asked me to wait for him.

Shining-eyed, she raised her head.

And the androids laughed.

The Waterworlders smiled secretly.
And the Aldebars — even the Aide-
bars — twisted their graven faces in
derision.

The cats glared at her with their
great green eyes. “Apeling calls to
apeling,” the female snarled.

The Danae were looking at her out
of merciless faces. “So, Teischa
wench — ” the woman could not resist
murmuring, “you are a bribe after all.”

The man’s fingers touched the set-
tings of his projector. “The Danae rule
the Galaxy, Teischa!” he said. “These
others have their puerile dreams — but
the Dana Law is supreme. You’ll hatch
no schemings of your own.”

He fired.

The Sirian touched a button on the
heavy belt that girdled it. The Dana

STAND WATCH IN THE SKY

beam thinned out, shook itself into
particles, and was gone.

“What now, Overlord?” the Sirian
mocked.

The Danae stood posed for a mo-
ment. The man still pointed his use-
less weapon, and did not remember to
lower it. The woman did not -move
from where she was, her mouth sound-
lessly open, her aristocratic eyes blank.

“You dared!” the man finally said,
awe-struck. Then the murmuring be-
gan from both of them.

“You will pay, Sirian — and you,
Teischa wench. You’ll pay, and your
peoples will pay. Your suns shall die,
and your races wither. Your worlds
shall grow cold. The Danae curse you.
All the Danae of all space curse you.
You will pay. You will scream, you
will grovel, you will beg. Your peoples
shall scream. When you are dust, when
your suns are ashes, when your plan-
ets are pebbles, if there is anywhere
a wretched remnant of your crawling
peoples, they will be screaming. We
curse you ...” On and on and on, the
Danae chanted vengeance.

The pterodactyl in the male an-
droid’s hands beat its wings and
strained against the chain as though
it understood, trying to break free and
hurl itself at Ladia and her pet.

The little stegosaur, too, seemed to
hear. Ladia bent to stroke the spiny
ridge along its back. “There is nothing
to fear, little one,” she murmured, but,
in spite of the warmth that flooded up
to her from Earth, she was afraid her-
self.

Like a physical force, the murmur-
ing beat against the watchers.

r y'TIE NERVES of the cats gave way.

They began to scream, adding a
counterpoint to the Danae chant. The
male edged closer.

The Sirian touched its fingers to
its belt. The cat slinked back.

“Better, puss,” the Sirian said.
“Purr as you will — but stay where you
are.” It turned to the Waterworlders.

“And you?”

The male shrugged. “It’s not our
quarrel — nor our curse.” He pointed
to the world. “The seas remain.”

The Sirian’s mouth stretched in its
wolflike laughter. “Hope eternal, eh,
and allegiance for the side with the
power?”

The Danae litany went on.

“Your suns shall die, and your peo-
ples wither. Y’our worlds shall grow
cold.”

“Hate. Claw, slash, catch, rip, tear.
Hate.”

Under the constant flagellation, La-
dia stepped closer to the Sirian.

A new note entered the chanting.
The Aldebars stood without expression,
but they, too, took up the beat.

“Break. Grind, smash, club, crush.”

The Sirian’s face was grave, but its
acid tongue was not stopped.

“Listen, little Teischa! We have in-
jured their pride. Their hopes and
plans have been snatched away. Earth
spins rapidly below — time whirls, the
Earthman matures. Listen to the dis-
gruntled clamor of the Galactic super-
beings ! ”

“Trample, kick, crack, cru — ”

The rhythm of hatred shuddered,
broke, and stopped.

The stars went out. The sun was
gone. The Earth radiated. They stood
on the rainbow.

BEAT! ■

BEAT!

The tidal wave struck them, flung
them, and passed on.

Silence clasped the watchers. Only
the pterodactyl croaked once, harshly.

And then it was as though a storm
unfolded in their faces.

EVEN LADIA, the little stegosaur
•*-' clutched beside her, searched deep
before she found in this Earthman the
boy who had touched his mind to
hers — how long ago?

He had grown.

The androids felt his justice first.

FlJTl IiE Science Fiction

“So, you are searchers? You would
find the race that made you?” Idly,
he wrung the pterodactyl’s neck and
flung it at their helmets. “I know
which.”

They forgot everything else in their
eagerness. They strained to hear him.

He said, “I know, and I will not
tell you. Search, things! May your
race go hungry all its life.”

He tore the Waterworlders out of
space, and flung them at the Pacific.
“Drink deep,” he said as they hurtled
into the sea.

He looked at the cats. “I am an
apeling; know that an apeling rules
you.”

He swung toward the Aldebars.
“Crush, eh? You’ve seen your last
massacre.”

The two creatures stood impassive-
ly. Suddenly, one of them tipped up
its weapon and fired at him. It died
as though a swung oaken beam had
met it. Blood trickled through the
breaks in its massive armor.

The other Aldebar rushed forward
and flung itself weeping on the crum-
pled figure. Kneeling, it picked up the
body of its mate and walked off into
the darkness.

Nodding, the Sirian followed them
with its eyes.

“You had analyzed them, of course,”
the Earthman said to it.

“Centuries ago. They are the poets
of conquest.” The Sirian nodded to-
ward the Earth. “May I?”

“Certainly.”

“Thank you.” It set the dials of its
analyzer and began to drift Earthward.
“Goodbye, little Teischa,” it said soft-
ly-

“Goodbye,” Ladia whispered. She
felt the Sirian’s pity, and her eyes
were wide as she followed the Earth-
man’s actions.

The Danae sauntered up to the
Earthman. “Well done,” the man said.

The woman’s lips curved into a silk-
en smile. “You are very powerful,”
she murmured. The Dana man had no
room in his thoughts to hear her.

“We offer you an alliance on equal
terms,” he said. “The Galaxy needs
strong hands like ours to guide it.”

“You’d offer me that?” the Earth-
man said incredulously. “Half the rule
of the Galaxy?”

The woman raised an eyebrow cov-
ertly. “And more.”

“Of the Universe,” the man said.

The Earthman looked at them quiet-
ly, catching them both in his gaze. He
said nothing.

The Danae waited for his answer.
They waited confidently. Then they
waited impatiently. And then they
licked their lips and waited frantical-
ly, until finally they broke. Their eyes
fell and their shoulders slumped. The
woman began to cry.

“Do you know the plan?” the man
mumbled, his eyes on his feet. “All
the generations in which we ruled the
Galaxy, we tried to find a plan for it
all, and a purpose. We never found it.
Do you know it?” He looked up at
the Earthman pleadingly, but he could
not keep his eyes on that face.

“Yes,” the Earthman said. For a
moment, Eadia could hear the old
echoes of the waking boy’s triumphant
shout in the calm thunder of the man’s
voice. “I know it.”

[ Turn To Page 84]

Remembered Words

Paul Mittelbuscher, Cal Beck, and Tom Clareson are the letter-writert
who should notify us which originals, from the May issue, they want to
receive. Beck is requested to make two selections, and Clareson three,
in the event that winners ahead of them want their first choice.

There was little joy in being a prince, when
all the language he learned was a flat
denial of everything he felt . . ,

DOUBLE-TALK

by Charles Dye

(Illustrated by Milton Luros)

Helman Holas had been in ill-health . . . the duel was considered little better

than murder.

H E WAS PICKED up by the
seat of his pants, kicking and
squalling, and told in a voice
of solemn thunder, “A prince doth not
boot an ambassador.”

That was how he learned he was
a prince.

He learned many such lessons, some
©i them applied to the seat of his

pants by his uncle, speaking firmly
between whacks.

“A prince — doth not — steal — cook-
ies.” It seemed like an untrue remark,
since he had just done that very thing.
Perhaps he was not really a prince at
all. What would they do to him when
they discovered that he was not the
right person? That catastrophic ques-

FVTVBE Science Fiction

tion frightened him, and he tried hard-
er to do what they said a real prince
did. He quickly forgot the reason for
his fright, but the feeling remained —
a lurking feeling of guilt, as if he were
ar imposter and someone someday
would find him out.

He learned: “A prince is proud and
doth not beg for favors like a little
commoner.’’ His nurse told him that.
And thereafter he asked for nothing;
but when he needed something, he
merely stood in silence, and would
uncomplainingly have suffered much
deprivation had not the servants been
alert in judging his needs.

“Soldiers die gloriously for their
country.” He found that one in a book
about old wars and planetary con-
quests, and it fascinated him; it
seemed so simple to die gloriously.
How he longed to be a soldier and die
gloriously — or do anything gloriously,
for that matter. The number of things
a prince had to learn to do seemed
endless and it seemed impossible to
do them right.

“A prince doth not associate with
commoners.” That one was harder, and
cost him a good friend and pal at
play.

There were other interesting things
he learned while growing. “ Gentlemen
do not shout. ...A sivord is worn to
the left, a dagger to the right.
. . .Gloves are carried in the left hand
and the cape is worn slung back over
the right shoulder, to allow freedom to
the sword-hand.” His tutor told him
that one. At that stage he learned the
most from his tutors, but his old
nurse still came by occasionally with
a stern word. “A prince doth not smile
at servant-girls; it encourages them
to Presume.” He was getting older now.

There were other things to learn in
studying to be a king. He studied the
geography of his planet; its economics
and mechanics and social dynamics;
and especially its history.

There was a preface to all history-
books inserted by the Solar Confeder-

acy, which explained in the odd em-
pire dialect that all planets were al-
lowed to work out their own destinies,
and their own governments, according
to their philosophy and desires, with
these two provisos: that they have
no economic or cultural intercourse
with any planet on a lower cultural or
economic level; and that only hand-
weapons be manufactured on any
planet.

It was explained in a footnote that
this removed the power of any minor-
ity to abuse an oppressed majority
without revolution, and thus kept ex-
cessive power from any government.
He snorted at that, for it was obvious
that no good member of the aristocra-
cy would ever abuse his control over
the commoners below him, anyhow.
It was unthinkable; it was just not
done. And no honest man on the twin
planets would use any weapon but a
sword or bow; it would be unsporting.

The footnote was insulting in its
implications that such a law was nec-
essary to prevent people from break-
ing custom. Perhaps it was necessary
on other planets, yes — but not on Al-
andria, his planet, or Melosandra, its
companion.

He customarily skipped most of
the history and went directly to the
planetary history to read, over and
over, the chapters on the history of
Alandria — his country — and its glori-
ous wars. The pages on the recent wars
with Melosandra were thumbed and
underlined and their military strategy
commented on along the margins.

'T'HERE CAME a time when he went
to his Uncle Cleve.

He was not king yet, merely a young
man, Elron Degale, a prince without
authority, a good citizen who should
not presume upon the time of his
superiors. So he bent his knee deeply
and apologetically when his uncle ap-
peared. “I’m sorry, sir — ”

“No apologies — glad to see you.’’
Cleve gripped his shoulder. “My, how

DOUBLE-TALK

the boy has grown.” He was a youth-
ful-looking man with a soldierly di-
rectness; but there was also something
in his manner that deliberately remind-
ed others of their positions. ‘ What
can I do for you, Elron? Advice or
help — I’m an old hand; is it trouble
with the girls?”

Prince Elron hesitated. “I don’t
think my education is adequately fit-
ting me for the kingship, sir.”

“A sober complaint. What do you
want added to it?”

“It’s too much at second hand. I
thought I could take a job a while
as a commoner, be incognito.” The
prince took the plunge. “I thought I
could take a walking tour in Melosan-
dra . . . maybe . . . learn the . . . uh . . . lan-
guage.” He blushed.

“Spying them out, eh?” Cleve ex-
claimed with energy. “Planning mili-
tary strategy? Thinking of a war?”
He clapped Elron on the shoulder and
turned away abruptly to look out a
window, becoming thoughtful. “Some
people would say you are over-enthusi-
astic; don’t think your father would
like it.”

Prince Elron touched his forehead
submissively, giving up the idea, his
heart sinking. “The king’s will is my
will.”

“He doesn’t have to hear of it,
though,” Cleve said energetically, turn-
ing back. “He can’t have any will on
the subject unless he’s heard of it;
promise me you’ll stay out of trouble
on this and you can have it.”

•

When Prince Elron reached Melo-
sandro, he boarded at a farm house
under the name of Ron Degannon. He
could not tell them he was a prince,
though he could admit being of the
nobility. “I’m a — ” He groped for a
word and realized suddenly that there
was no such word in the Melosandran
language. “ — a — ” He finally used
a word which sounded as if it should

mean noble — although he had heard
it used only for goodness — and his
questioner giggled, while her husband
concealed a smile behind his book.

“Thou canst not just be noble for
a living.” She turned smiling to her
husband. “Would that we could, eh,
Altred?”

Her husband still smiling lowered
his book. “No, lad, try again; I see
you still have not learned the language
well.”

Prince Elron searched his mind,
thinking of all the professions and
tasks for which he had learned words,
and comparing them with the activi-
ities of his life for a parallel that they
could understand. What kind of use-
ful work did he do, in their termin-
ology? He found himself blushing and
feeling shamed, wishing oddly that the
subject had not come up. He found the
simplest and most general word for
those who directed as opposed to those
who obeyed. “I’m a superior.”

Her husband hid his face behind his
book.

“Yes,” she urged gently, “but su-
perior in doing what?”

He thought of nobles, and their
duchies and sovereignties over farms
and towns. “I am responsible for land
— large areas of land.”

“Oh, an agronomist,” his hostess
cried happily. “Now I understand;
you are in the same profession as Al-
tred and myself.”

He was silent, feeling himself con-
fused and inexplicably desiring to say
yes.

“Do not embarrass the lad, Ammy,”
said the agronomist, rising heavily and
coming over. “He’s not finding the
righ*: words this morning.” He ad-
dressed Prince Elron again. “What
was thee educated in, lad?”

“Everything — a little bit of every-
thing,” Elron said helplessly, despair-
ing of being understood. He added au-
tomatically — “So that I might better
understand the problems of the people
and the land.”

FUTURE Science Fiction

“There you are, Amniy — ” said the
husband, sitting down on a more com-
fortable chair to view the movie broad-
cast. “It’s simple.”

“Thee art an administrator!” she
exclaimed, clapping her hands.

Later that night when he had re-
tired to his own room, he looked up
through the lucite ceiling at the star-
ry sky. “I am a noble.” He said it
easily in his own tongue, and it was
the explanation for everything — a word
like distant trumpets blowing, calling
to duty, valor.

ILJE LEFT after a few more days,
although he called them Alfred
and Ammy by then; but he wanted to
be free from pretending. He went to
one of the great cities and wandered
its streets looking and listening.

The people were richly clothed and
seemed happy — perhaps a little fat for
his standards, but fit. They had al-
most no sense of the value of time
and wasted much of it in looking at
art, listening to music and discussing
it afterwards. The food, as everywhere
on Melosandra, was delicious past
words and wonderfully varied.

Every man worked at some job,
apparently with great earnestness; no
man feeling degraded by any form of
labor, but instead proud of working.
But they did not discuss their work, or
anything else serious; this difference
was the most difficult of all to grow
accustomed to. He never saw Melo-
sandrans totally solemn — they always
seemed cheerful, although sometimes
they laughed at things which Elron
would have thought deserving only of
condemnation or righteous anger, so
that he saw at last that there was
an odd streak of sorrow or resignation
in their humor.

They never spoke of Alandria, the
smaller twin planet with its high desert
mountains and stern inhabitants. And
they never seemed aware that the Alan-
drians considered themselves ene-
mies to Melosandra, and called its way

of life dissolute and immoral. But
the prince found he liked the Melosan-
dran way — innocent and amoral, it
seemed to him, kindly and pleasant.
The question puzzled him after a time
as exactly how to put to words the
reasons why the Alandrians needed
conquest here. But after tossing sleep-
less one night, and rising to litter the
floor with sheets of paper on which he
tried to write out convincing argu-
ments, he saw at last that the Melo-
sandrans were children — good children
let out to play, without any sense of
duty, or position, or sterness such as
was considered adult responsibility.
Children who needed parents and did
not know it. They would be the better
for conquest, and the discipline
conquest would bring to them. He
went back to bed and slept, reassured.

He had joined a group of foreign
people as a new friend, and he took
from them many friendly insults and
liberties which would have meant in-
stant death on his own world. Yet
here it did not mean insult, and there
seemed to be no humiliations to losing
dignity and being laughed at. They
seemed to admire honesty instead of
pride; he liked their ways and liked
them.

At the end of the year he was a Mel-
osandran, without accent, and as at
home in the surroundings and ideas of
Melosandra as if he had been born to
them. And he found that he did not
want to go back to Alandria. He packed
reluctantly, forcing his hands, feeling
as if puppet-strings were pulling him
back to the rigid, narrow life of a
prince. Rebelliously, he thought of
never going back, of vanishing; but
such a luxury as the freedom to vanish
could not be permitted to the crown
prince; he knew it would be futile.
Cleve would send detectives to drag
him back. There was no escape from
being a noble.

On the space-trip back, he cheered
himself up with a resolve that someday
he would look that pleasant group up

DOUBLE-TALK

again and drink, talk, play records,
and laugh together as before.

/'■''LEVE MET him at the spaceport,
^ looking exactly the same, and
greeted him heartily; the prince heard
the sound of the familiar Alandrian
and answered automatically in Alan-
drian with a strange shock, as if he had
almost forgotten his own language in
a year. For a few minutes it seemed
to be another person who was answer-
ing his Uncle Cleve — the younger self
who had never left his own planet;
then as the talk continued, and he
looked around at the familiar buildings
and encircling sky-towering mountains
of his country, the strangeness faded
and with it all the new desires and
rebellions. He was just Cleve’s nephew.
Prince Elron Degale of Alandria.

After a long talk, Cleve admitted
himself pleased with Elron, that he had
returned with so much information that
would be useful in the conquest of the
twin planet.

Elron’s father, the king, died two
years later, and he was crowned king
a week after that.

•

He was king; he looked out of the
wide, curved window at the high roll-
ling hills, the farms, and small hand-
some factories of his country. “A king
is wise, just, and moderate,” he said
doubtfully. Was he wise, just, and
moderate? He touched the bell for the
official beginning of his day.

The Ambassador from Melosandra
entered, asked, “What is your deci-
sion?”

King Elron said firmly, “Unless our
terms are met within twenty days, we
shall declare war.”

The excuse was good. Two young
Alandrian noble hot-heads, vacation-
ing on Melosandra, had challenged the

well known Melosandran statesman,
Helman Holas, to a duel after a pri-
vate quarrel. Holas had consented to
the duel. It had been held privately
on two successive days; in the second
one the statesman had been killed.
It was stressed in the newspaper-re-
ports that Helman Holas had been
rusty at swordsmanship and in ill
health, and his physician had recently
advised him that he was overworking
and needed more rest. In this light
they considered the duel little better
than murder. In a wave of indignation
Melosandra had indicted all parties to
the duel: the doctor; the two seconds;
and the two young Alandrian duel-
lists, and sentenced them to person-
ality-erasure.

Alandria was outraged at this; her
ambassador on the twin planet pro-
tested that the duel had been a legit-
imate duel of honor, and demanded
that the young Alandrians be released,
with their memories intact. The Melo-
sandran government would not —
could not — give any man up from their
hospitals after he had been sentenced.
No matter how conciliating they want-
ed to be, they could do nothing now
to prevent war.

All of Alandria had been hoping
and training for war ever since she
had signed a treaty of defeat fifty-five
years before, and left Melosandra the
victor; but there was no doubt who
had won, and Melosandra now held
sovereignty over their mutual moon.
The moon was valuable for a shipping-
base for stellar trade. It was worth
little to Alandria, for her trade was
small; but to hold it, and have the
Melosandran traders request their li-
censes from the Alandrian capitol,
would symbolize much in conquest
and pride. It would be a glorious war.

It would not be a glorious war from
the Melosandran point of view. From
what he had learned from his friends
there, Elron saw that they would sim-
ply be surprised to find themselves in
battle, with all the business of their

FVTVttE Science Fiction

lives interrupted for the need of de-
fending themselves. They would not
understand the reasons for the inva-
sion; but that would be due to their
childishness.

King Elron tried to settle down to
the reading of acts of parliament that
had to be signed, but a headache came
and got between him and the work —
a dull persistent ache behind his eyes.
He called the staff physician; a king
must be kept fit.

/"' , HIEF STAFF PHYSICIAN Cor-
laya was a foreigner — an im-
migrant Solarian who still retained a
slight Solarian accent — but she was
better-trained and more capable than
any doctor that could be found on
the twin planets, and he trusted her
ability.

When she finished the examination
she said, “Anything bothering you?”

He hesitated a moment, making the
possible connection between politics
and a headache, and mastered his re-
luctance to confide to someone not di-
rectly concerned. “Perhaps; I’ve just
issued an ultimatum to Melosandra.”

The doctor nodded, her fingers on
his pulse. “Your pulse went up when
you said that; it could be mental con-
flict. Any conscious indecision?”

“No.”

“You spent some time in Melosan-
dra once, I understand.”

“Yes.”

“You made friends there?”

How cool the doctor’s fingers were
on his wrist! “Yes,” he said, smiling
slightly, and for an instant he was in
the midst of a remembered crowd
coming laughing from a theatre . . .

He returned reluctantly to what she
was saying.

“There is a faint possibility of some
physical ill; but the most likely is
that there is a sub-personality trying
to protest your decision with pain — a
secondary personality-pattern and
value-sfet learned on your trip, in op-
position to your dominant personality

and ideals.” She smiled reassuringly.
“Everyone has troubles with ambival-
ence sometimes; all you can do is ig-
nore it. Take these euphorics.” She
handed him a small bottle of white
pills. “When you get a headache, if
it’s psychological, they will get rid of
it in a hurry; if they don’t, we’ll have
to give you a physical check-up.”

He went back to his office to give
a second audience to the Melosandran
Ambassador.

•

The ambassador’s face was pale
and rock-hard. “I am authorized to
present a settlement. . .it was certain
terms.”

King Elron inclined his head. “We
are willing to consider anything com-
mensurate with honor.” He did not
expect that the proposal would be a
concession; Melosandra could not
make any concession breathing its own
system of justice.

“The recent negotiation has brought
to the attention of Melosandran gov-
ernment that the people of Alandria
are ill-disposed towards them; there-
fore there is always danger of war 1
coming on minor pretexts.” He recog-
nized the king’s growing anger with
a nod. “I speak bluntly, and I apol-
ogize to your lordship. We are aware
that a point of honor is far from be-
ing a minor matter from the Alandrian
point of view; and we have also be-
come aware that the Alandrian view
of honor differs from ours. This dif-
ference of view is the basic source of
our friction; therefore we demand, as
the condition of peace, that the top
ten percent of Alandrian students each
year be educated in Melosandran
schools, on scholarships we will pro-
vide.”

TTHE TERMS were intolerable.
A Their intention, obviously, was
to permeate the best Alandrian stu-
dents with Melosandran culture, so

DOUBLE-TALK

tbal the Alandrian ideals of life would
be blurred and changed towards the
good-natured, unfighting Melosandran
way. It was the equivalent of giving up
all ideals and aspirations as a unique
people and a dedicated fighting-ma-
chine, and becoming instead, just a
good-natured mass of individual hu-
man beings. It was the equivalent of
cultural suicide.

King Elron cleared his throat. “As
representative for my people, to whom
they have given all decisions, I de-
clare that it is impossible for Alan-
dria to accept the second provision of
this offer.”

The ambassador said, his face
slightly whiter, “I have been author-
ized to say that in the event of war
there will be no peace; Melosandra
will not cease to fight until the provi-
sion for the exchange of students is
accepted, and written into your na-
tional constitution.”

“That will never be!”

•

The Solarian Ambassador was next.
He was an old man, thin and dried-up
and light, and he spoke in a way that
was neither formal nor informal —
merely imformal, as if he w r ere ex-
changing telegrams rather than face to
face talk.

“As you know — ” he began imme-
diately upon accepting a chair and
crossing his legs comfortably. “The
powers that we of Sol wield over
wards and members of the confederacy
is severely limited by our ow T n consti-
tution, as well as by the provisions of
our treaties with the other members.
Beyond forbidding certain classifica-
tions of weapons, and taking upon
ourselves the policing that enforces
that ban, we disclaim any policy of in-
terference in local wars and revolu-
tions.”

He paused, his clear old eyes scan-
ning, inspecting the king’s face to
make sure he had understood; then,

satisfied, he went on. “However, ac-
cording to our best sociological diag-
nosis, it is never healthful for a so-
ciety at this stage in industrialization
to indulge in a war; for the civiliza-
tion of Melosandra, it would be dis-
asterous.” He paused again, looking
for understanding in the king’s face.
“Melosandra would be corrupted by
the confusion and accept demoraliza-
tion as a new norm in a disgust against
Alandrian asceticism.”

The king said simply: “It is a mat-
ter of honor; Alandria was defeated
fifty years ago, and must redeem her-
self.”

The ambassador blinked several
times, as if about to speak and re-
straining his words. “I can’t refute
that, of course,” he smiled at last.

The king smiled back, liking the
dry old man, but wondering what he
had meant.

The Solarian Ambassador added,
“But you understand that we of Sol,
representing the controlling vote in
the Confederacy, are totally against
war in this case. We do not enforce
our recommendations — we merely an-
nounce them publically — but they are
usually followed.”

Mild as the statement was, it sound-
ed like a concealed threat. The king
stiffened. “We subscribe to all the
constitutional provisions of the Con-
federacy; any attempt to enforce ad-
ditional rules we will resist to our last
living man.”

“I believe you,” the ambassador
said. “The Solarian Confederacy would
be stupid to shed blood to enforce a
recommendation against bloodshed,
would it not?”

It was an incomprehensible state-
ment. Surely Sol could not allow its
opinions and desires to be flouted pub-
licly, without losing honor. The pride
of their people — but had they any
pride? Perhaps they were not gentle-
men, and the ambassador meant no
more than he said; the king lost some
of his respect for the ambassador.

FUTURE Science Fiction

“The Solarian Confederacy is send-
ing a Board of Arbitration to study the
problem and make further recommen-
dations,” the ambassador said bland-
ly. “This implies no pressure on Alan-
dria to accept such recommendations;
I hope your Majesty understands
that.”

Again it sounded like a concealed
threat. The ambassador was so ex-
tremely bland and friendly, like a
victor.

'T’lIE KING puzzled over the am-
bassador’s last remark after he
h" 1 gone, and his headache came back.
He tried one of the pills; after it took
effect he felt happy and relieved. The
sun shone more brightly, and he didn’t
mind the fact that his head now felt
dizzy, but it still ached.

He began to wonder if he were sick.

The chief staff physician gave him
a check-up the next day. It only took
a half hour, but it seemed a long proc-
ess, as he was moved from one odd
looking machine to another and
strapped in, or enclosed, for an in-
stant while they buzzed or whirred or
hummed and gave out an incompre-
hensible record of their findings on
tape and photographs.

Corlaya finally sat down behind her
desk and looked at all the mechanical
reports, spreading them on the desk
top in a row as one would an unsatis-
factory dummy hand of cards. “You
have a small tumor on the surface of
the left hemisphere of your brain; the
tumor will have to be removed.”

“Should I resign?” he asked, hold-
ing himself upright and unyielding
against a desire to slump and sit down
to support his head in his hands.

“No; you won’t die or be in-
capacitated, my Lord. There will be
no symptom but the headache or diz-
ziness; we can arrange an operation
quietly.”

“As soon as possible, please,” The
headache, when it came, made it al-
most Impossible to concentrate on what

he was saying or doing. He could not
go on indefinitely pretending he felt
all right.

She said crisply. “You will be able
to return to work three days after the
operation. We will inform the planet
that you had a fall and a broken ver-
tebrae, which required three days
total immobility. We will arrange the
operation for Sunday — for the surgeon
w r e need is a Solarian practicing in
Melosandra — and he will have to give
the appearance of arranging himself
a short vacation, without hastily can-
celing prior appointments. Will that
be satisfactory, my Lord?”

The operation would come ten days
before the war began; he would be
fit and ready to coordinate his gen-
erals in three days more — seven days
to spare before war. “Fine. Is there
any possibility of failure in the oper-
ation?”

“One in fifty or a hundred, no more
than that.”

He smiled. “Then you and the other
doctor will be risking yourselves in
this operation; for if it fails Alandria
would suspect you of conspiracy. I
thank you for being willing to take
the risk.”

The chief physician dismissed that
possibility with a gesture of a small
brown hand. “We always take such
risks; it is a reasonably safe operation,
although I would recommend that you
leave instructions for a successor.
Something can go wrong even in the
safest operation.”

He found himself watching the mo-
tions of her red lips instead of listen-
ing, and pulled his gaze away quickly
to the impersonal examination-room
with its aseptic grey and white colors,
and squat streamlined machines, and
levers and buttons that were both in-
timidating and reassuring in their im-
pression of power.

TTXURING THE next ten days, El-
ron shifted his brother to a more
responsible position, and invited him to

DOUBLE-TALK

stay with him while he looked for a
new place to live. In the evenings, he
talked over problems of state with him
casually — on the excuse that there
was a remote chance of his being
killed during the coming war. Several
times, when he was discussing the con-
quest of Melosandra — using the names
of Melosandran cities that had grown
so familiar to him during his half-for-
gotten year there — the pain in his
head intensified from a dull ache to a
point where he had to use all his self-
control to keep from faltering. But
he had been forwarned against this
and was ready, tire doctor had warned
him that the tumor was located some-
where in the speech-centers between
the early-learning section, where was
located the integration of thought in
his own language, and the later learn-
ing of Melosandran that linked all
his memories of his year on the twin
planet. He expected it, so his control
was good; he did not think that his
brother noticed anything.

The night before the operation he
wrote a letter to his brother explaining
the circumstances of the operation and
giving careful analysis of the situa-
tion and the respective positions of
Melosandra and Alandria in the com-
ing war — with the behavior and de-
gree of resistance that should be ex-
pected from the Melosandrans. He
stayed up most of the night writing
it and, when he finished, the pain in
his head was Jthrobbing so that he
could barely sign his name. He read
it over with a strange sense of fate.

This was going to be more than just
a minor operation, he was quite sure.

When he went under the anesthetic
he was thinking of death.

•

He awoke quite rested and happy.
Above him was a pleasant smooth ex-
panse of pale grey, with an oval of re-
flected sunlight glowing on it. He
turned his head. The light was being

reflected from the shiny surface of a
large square object that sat beneath
a square opening to the outside sun-
shine and sky. He knew he knew the
names for these things, but it didn’t
seem important to try to think —

Beside the bed, looking at him at-
tentively, stood a luciously pretty
woman in a flame-orange business suit.
He smiled. She smiled. He whistled ap-
preciatively and made a grab at her —
She laughed and moved out of reach.

“Know any words?” she asked. The
words vanished as soon as she said
them, leaving no echo in the ears and
no memory of them; but he remem-
bered what she meant and the musical
low voice, even if he couldn’t remem-
ber what she had said.

He shrugged and reached up to feel
his head. There was a section that was
covered with some smooth, artificial
material with a bulge in the center. It
w r as about the size and shape of a
fried egg; he laughed at that and
opened his mouth to tell it — and then
made the interesting discovery that he
could not talk. Words were not only
hard to find, they eluded him entire-
ly. He laughed again and pointed to
his open mouth.

“No words,” she nodded, dropping
two white pills in a container of wa-
ter that stood by his bedside. “Here,
sit up and drink this.”

He drank the water, wincing hu-
mourously at the taste, and handed
her back the empty container, noticing
the way the light sparkled in its pure
transparency. And noticing also the
way light glowed softly in her brown-
gold hair and in the clear depths of
her blue eyes.

K MEMORY sharpened as he stared
•*■*■*■ at her, and the long moment of
now no longer seemed insulated from
all past and future, but was crowded
and jostled by memory, like voices in
the next room adding an undercur-
rent of sound. But they were mem-
ories of his escape to Melosandra, and

FUTURE Science Fiction

the pleasant times; and it did not make
him feel less peaceful.

“Hi, babe,” he said softly in Melo-
sandran. “How long have I been
blind?”

“All your life,” she said softly in
the same tongue. “What do you see?”

He looked around at the sunlight
streaming in the window, the shadow
cast by the table and the light reflect-
ed and diffused from its shiny top in
sparkles and spatters of brilliance
around the silver-grey walls. Warm
air came in the window with a scent
of earth and green growing grass.

The woman stood beside his bed,
small and lithe and trim; alert and
intelligent with an expression that
could be something better than mere
friendship. He had known her a long
time, and yet this was the first time
he had seen her.

“Chief Staff Physician Corlaya,”
he said hesitatingly, the Alandrian
words sounded clumsy and strange,
with no connection to the smiling per-
son who looked at him. He relapsed
into Melosandran. “I am seeing things
•—things and people — instead o,f words
— and I like it!”

“Get up, please,” she said smiling.
“Here’s your shirt.”

He pushed back the light cover and
swung his feet down to the floor, dis-
covering that the “bed” was the mov-
able stretcher table, and he could see
the examination room out the door.
He was still wearing his trousers as
he had been on the table when he went
under the hypnotic long ago. It must
be still the same day, then, merely a
few hours later. He bent and slipped
his feet into his sandals. His memory
of the days before the operation seemed
a lifetime away in some dim previous
incarnation. Colors and sounds were
bright and vivid now, where they had
been dim and remote before. He ac-
cepted the green iridescent uniform
shirt with the military orange tabs on
the shoulders. The vividness of see-
ing and hearing and feeling continued,

although he expected it to fade. And
he was thinking in Melosandran. That
puzzled him.

“I like it,” he repeated, finally
buckling his sword around him. “What
is it? When does it stop? When do 1
wake up?” He stepped into the exam-
ination room and saw it as if he had
never seen it before. She followed,
and her presence was disturbing, like
being too near to a magnet. He real-
ized he had spoken in Melosandran
again, automatically.

“It might not stop; it might last,”
she said, looking up at him with in-
tense remote interest suddenly showing
in her eyes. “In a rigid heirarchical
culture, the culture-ideals and regula-
tions are unstated and unconscious,
and contained in conditioned reflexes
to the words in the language. The
surgeon did his best to conserve as
much tissue as possible, but he had to
take out about a four inch circle some-
where in the language section. He
must have taken out Alandrian, and
your inhibitions with it. Come over to
the encephalograph here and we’ll — ”
“I don’t like that snakelike, scien-
tific glitter in your eyes,” he drawled,
looking down at her with one eyebrow
lifted. “If you’re going to try to cure
me, bring into consideration that I
don’t want to be cured just yet. Let’s
do the town first.”

She chuckled and stepped closer.
“If you were cured you’d be shocked
at what you just said.”

“All the more reason I should never
be cured,” he said softly and soberly,
looking down into her upturned face.
“And if you get any closer, I won’t
answer for the consequences.”

She stepped back, openly half
laughing. “Kings don’t talk like that.”
“I do, and I am.” He smiled grim-
ly. “You can’t frighten me with word-
mottos any more; let’s go.”

CHE HELD the doorway, barring it
^ with outspread arms, and whis-
pered in the harsher Alandrian tongue,

DOUBLE-TALK

“But what of Propriety, Rectitude,
Duty, Honor, Nobility, your dedica-
tion to Kingly Office, the Preparations
for the Glorious War?” Her eyes were
dancing with glee.

He paused, visualizing his people — a
whole planet of good, lean, fit, hand-
trained people preparing to kill and
die for something which had no ex-
istence; prepared to slaughter and
suffer for a mere word which he even
had trouble remembering. What had
she said . . . what was it? Oh, yes,
liiner , . .no, that wasn’t it — Honor a
word which was something like the
good Melosandran word honesty, but
had no such good solid meaning.

“Ptah!” he exploded suddenly, half
laughing. “The Glorious War! I’ll fix
that!” She stood out of the way as
he strode through to her office and
sat down at her desk, taking out his
pen.

Pen poised, he hesitated, and turned
to her. “I don’t want to write in bro-
ken Alandrian with a Melosandran ac-
cent,” he said appealing to the doc-
tor. “It would look fishy.”

“Write left-handed,” she said. “That
will bring the right side of your brain
into dominance. We only operated on
the left half that controls the right
hand, and dominates your very right-
handed thinking. The opposite weak
half wasn’t touched; it’s probably a
good Alandrian patriot still.”

He shifted his pen and began to
write clumsily with his left hand. As
he wrote, the Alandrian words came
back, bearing sorrow, and dignity;
pride and pomp; and with them r.n un-
derstanding of how he could bring his
people the sacrifice and honor they
wanted, without war.

She looked over his shoulder as he
wrote.

The people would congregate to
hear the speech by the king, standing
silently in all the public squares, lis-
tening as the national anthem was
played quietly and then, after silence,

hearing the even voice of the king
from t-v speakers.

“There will be no war.

“We will submit ourself to the Melo-
sandran provisions of peace.

“We will welcome a Solar ian com-
mittee of adjustment and accept all
of their recommendations; and there
will never again be war with Melosan-
dra.

“You are my people; you have
sworn fealty to me and put the power
of decision in my hands. But in this
decision, there is not one man on this
whole globe who would agree; I have
no power against you to make you do
my bidding.

“You may do as you choose.”

He reread it and saw it was what
he had wanted. To the people of Alan-
dria, the suggestions of the commis-
sion would be dishonor and disgrace;
but because he had chosen it and chal-
lenged them to break their allegiance
to him, they would accept the loss in
silence — and by the unreasoning, vol-
untary sacrifice would prove them-
selves loyal as no sacrifice of blood in
war could have proven it. They would
gain from the pride of their submis-
sion to his disgrace; they would think
that he had betrayed them or gone
bad, but they would obey.

And their contempt and loathing
fo their fallen king would be un-
ending.

“You’ll resign, of course,” said the
doctor, reading over his shoulder.

“Of course,” he said, signing his
nanv to it, realizing that with the sig-
nature, he changed the future history
of the twin planets, and thinking. And
the thought suddenly struck him that
the Solarian ambassador would be
pleased. And he remembered that his
headache began getting worse after he
had taken pills from Corlaya — who
was a Solarian.

She kissed the back of his neck, and •
he swung around and gripped her
arms. “You witch!” he said, shaking
her gently. “Now I knQw why Sam-

FUTURE Science .Fiction

son was given a haircut. We’ll go away
and live in Melosandra, or on a Sol
planet, or wherever you please; but if
I ever start getting a headache after
you’ve given me some mysterious
pills — ” He stopped for breath, look-
ing into twinkling blue eyes. She was
saying nothing smugly with a very
feminine self-satisfied smile curving
her lips.

He raised his head and addressed
one last appeal to the rigid formal

walls of the medical office in the up-
right formal unbending palace of the
King of Alandria.

“Does a king ever embrace and kiss
his chief staff physician?”

“No,” voices within him answered
silently, as he bent forward towards
the red lips. “No,” they screamed
with all the voices of his ancestry. But
he couldn’t hear them; he didn’t talk
their language any more.

★

I T.IK. - m Ml

READIN’ and WRITHIN’ (Book Review's)

FLATLAND, by A Square (Edwin A.
Abbott). Dover Publ., New York, 1952.
109 pp. $1.00 in paper, $2.25 in cloth.

There have been many old science-fiction
“classics” reprinted in recent years, but
I doubt that I’ll provoke much argument
by remarking that most of them are rather
dull going. I don’t know of any such book
as old as 70 years which can be counted
upon to hold the modern science-fiction
reader’s attention from the first page to
the last.

Except “Flatland.” The originally-
anonymous author was a theologian and
Shakespeare scholar with a number of
“serious” writings to his credit. His claim
to fame now rests, however, solely on
“Flatland”, the first popular account of a
four-dimensional world, written 20 years
before Einstein’s Special Theory of Rel-
ativity.

If that description makes the book
sound formidable, it’s unjust. “Flatland”
is a sheer delight from beginning to end.
Dover’s own publicity for the book com-
pares Abbott to Lewis Carroll, and the evi-
dence for such a comparison is persua-
sive.

The Flatland of the book’s title is a
land of two dimensions, or in other words,
a plane, like a tabletop. It is populated
by triangular tradesmen; square business-
men and lawyers; pentagonal physicians
and other professionals; and circular
priests. The women of Flatland are
straight lines, with a mouth at one end and
a sting at the other — a brainless but dan-
gerous lot. The rules and regulations 0 f
Flatland, as well as its customs and tra-
ditions, may strike you as more than
usually goofy, but after a while you’ll dis-
cover that, like Abbott’s two-sided women,
they carry stings in their tails.

The test of a satirical fantasy such as
“Flatland” — or, for that matter, “Gulli-
ver’s Travels” — is how well its observations
on human (or geometrical) behavior hold
up under the passage of time. Abbott’s ro-
mance passes this test with a mark of A-
plus. Remarks on Flatland society which

apply equally well to our own — not 70
years ago, but right now — crop up on
nearly every page. In describing the gov-
ernment of Flatland, for instance, the
square narrator remarks piously on p. 30:
“...the toleration of Irregularity is in-
compatible with the safety of the state.”
That sentiment could safely be put into
the mouths of such policy-makers of our
time as Sens. McCarthy and McCarran.
Or take this one, on p. 45: "It is the merit
of the Circles that they have effectively
suppressed those ancient heresies which
led men to waste energy and sympathy in
the vain belief that conduct depends upon
will, effort, training, encouragement,
praise, or anything else but Configura-
tion." Our local Circles haven’t gotten
quite that far yet, but if the statement
nevertheless sounds familiar to you, rest
assured that it’s no accident. The Rev.
Abbott knew his human nature bitterly
well.

Dover notes that the book “has had a
marked impact upon scientific education,
not a few of today’s scientists having re-
ceived their first impetus from a boyhood
reading of “Flatland”. I can add that at
least one science-fiction writer got one of
his first shoves from the same source ; I
was lucky enough to fall upon a decrepit
copy of an early edition in my high-school
library. I’m pleased to see the book back
in print — and I envy those of you who may
be encountering it for the first time.

If you’ve ever felt a little puzzled by the
descriptions of the Fourth Dimension with
which science-fiction abounds, it’s possible
that you haven’t yet quite grasped what
a strange thing the Third Dimension is.
If so, try “Flatland”. It’s a wise and
funny fantasy, and among its many at-
tractions are the Rev. Abbott’s own il-
lustrations, of which there are a round
dozen.

The author may have been a square, but
“Flatland” is real gone.

— James BlisK
[Turn To Page 84]

PLEASE TO REMEMBER

by Mack Reynolds

( illustrated by Milton Luros )

Obviously, Uncle Manfred
was off his rocker — imagine
a person remembering
what he was going to do
years and years in the
future!

T WAS JIMMY,
the whining brat,
who started it off.
Uncle Manfred had
been quiet all eve-
ning, showing no
signs at all of his —
well, his peculiar-
ity; and the rest of
the family had been
figuratively holding
its breath in hope.

Jimmy must have read it in a comic
book, or heard it on TV or something;
he wasn't smart enough to have
thought it up by himself.

He wrinkled his nose in disgust,
pushed his potatoes — which had been
cooked with their skins on — to the
side of his plate and whined, “I hate
potato skins, and I’m glad I hate
’em, because if I liked ’em I’d eat ’em
— and I hate ’em.”

Bertha screwed her plump face into
what was meant to be a mildly re-
proving frown and said, ‘‘Please, dear,
you have better manners than that.”
Which was a gross exaggeration.

Mike Wheaton, the guest, winked
at Jimmy and said seriously, “I re-
member once when we were in Ko-
rea. All our fresh vegetables ran out
and for a spell of nearly four months
the nearest thing we had to fresh veg-
etables was the skin on our potatoes.
We grew real fond of them.”

Uncle Manfred was at it again.

Jimmy sneered, “You’re kiddin’.”
Mike shook his head seriously. “I
mean it. You see, the vitamins and
minerals in a potato are practically all
in the skins; when you can’t get your
vitamins any other way then you . . . ”
Uncle Manfred said thoughtfully, “I
remember once on the Mars-Callisto
run when we didn’t have any Terran
food but dried chili-peppers for nigh
onto a year. We’d crashed on Gany-
mede and they took that long to res-
cue us.”

There was a pregnant silence.
Finally Bertha cleared her throat
and said hopefully, “There’s peach
cobbler for dessert.”

FUTURE Science Fiction

It didn’t work. Mike turned to Un-
cle Manfred and said, “The what
run?”

Uncle Manfred took his time. He
mashed his potato, poured on some
gravy, stirred the two up until they
were a satisfactorily homogeneous
mess, then repeated, “The Mars-Cal-
listo run. I was a jetman.” He added,
reminiscently, “It was a hell of a
job.”

Jimmy, whose recently-acquired
thirteenth year had put him among
the ranks of those who have discov-
ered that their elders aren’t necessar-
ily omnipotent, sneered, “I’ll bet.”

Bertha kicked him under the table,
which was a mistake.

He yelped, then whined, “Aw maw,
whatza difference? This new fella of
Veronica’s is gonna find out the old
jerk is missin’ half his marbles any-
way. Whatza difference, huh? What-
cha wanta kick me for?”

Veronica maneuvered Mike Wheat-
on out of the dining room as quickly
as possible and into the parlor, while
Bertha went to work, as prearranged,
at attempting to get Uncle Manfred to
bed.

“I don’t want to go to bed,” he said
irritably, “I’d like to talk to that
young man. Most sensible youngster
I've seen in some time. What war was
he talking about, the scrap with Cal-
listo?”

Bertha drew up her five feet two of
plumpness and her face began to go
scarlet with rage. She snapped, “Of
course not, you stupid old fool. He’s
talking about Korea; Michael Wheat-
on’s a veteran.” She added, complete-
ly irrelevantly, “Besides that, he’s Jo-
seph Wheaton’s son and will undoubt-
edly inherit the Wheaton Chemical
Works. I’d think that with such an
eligible young man, you’d watch the
nonsense you ...”

Uncle Manfred wasn’t listening.
“Korea,” he said, in surprise. “Doesn’t
look old enough to have been in that.”
He shook his head. “Wonderful what

cosmetic-surgery and those immor-
tamines’ll do these days.” He scowled
worriedly. “Or have I got my dates
mixed up again? What year is this,
anyway, Bertha?”

The impossible fool! She just
wished there was some way of ... of
knocking him over the head or some-
thing. He ruined everything, just eve-
rything; her bridge club, her social
acquaintances — she knew she was the
talk of the town. A psychopathic case
in her home. And poor Veronica, how
would the girl ever be able to hook. . .
uh, that is, make a suitable match,
with a notoriously crazy uncle to scare
away the young men.

Finally she was able to wangle him
up to his room.

O ACK IN the parlor, Mike Wheaton
was saying, “He wasn’t kidding,
was he?”

Veronica’s usually washed out eyes
began to flare, but she controlled her-
self. After all, she wasn’t getting any
younger and if she was ever going to
get a husband and escape from this
madhouse. Well —

She forced a smile, remembering to
keep her lips down over her overly
prominent teeth, and said in her shrill
voice, “Oh, let’s not talk about Uncle
Manfred. Tell me more about your
thesis; about the moddlecules and
everything.”

“Molecules,” he corrected absently.

She clenched her teeth together and
could feel her face going white. It was
no use now. It would be better to tell
the whole thing. “He was working,
last year, at Los Alamos,” she blurted,
almost nastily. “There was an explo-
sion or something — you know, you can
never get the details of these things —
and everybody else on Uncle Man-
fred’s project was killed. He was in
the er . . . hospital for months but fi-
nally they released him and now he
lives with us.”

Veronica stopped, as though that
explained everything.

PLEASE TO REMEMBER

Mike frowned. “But what’s the
matter with him?”

Lord! How she hated this subject.
Everybody — but everybody! — learned
about it sooner or later.

“He thinks he remembers living in
the year 2050,” she snapped.

“I beg your pardon?”

She repeated slowly, irritatedly,
“He thinks he lived in the year 2050;
that he was a member of the crew of a
spaceship, and that he traveled be-
tween the stars. He’s always talking
about the cities of that time and the
other planets and space and the other
things he ‘remembers’ having seen.”
Uncle Manfred had come back
down from his room and entered the
parlor unheard. He said, mildly,
“What a foolish thing to say, Veron-
ica. I think no such thing.”

She came hurriedly to her feet and
spun around to face him. “You. . .you
mean you’ve recovered,” she shrilled.
“You don’t. . .”

He lit his pipe carefully. “I don’t
remember having done those things; I
remember going to do them. After all,
my dear, that’s a hundred years in the
future, and hasn’t happened yet.”

TriEY HELD a tearful family con-
ference afterwards. That is, it
was tearful as far as Veronica and her
mother were concerned. Uncle Man-
fred was more bewildered than any-
thing else, and Jimmy, draped teen-
age-wise in a chair, stayed on the side-
lines drinking it in with satisfaction.

“But, how can you?” Bertha wailed.
“My own brother, making me the
laughing stock of the town.” Her var-
ious chins quivered.

Uncle Manfred puffed on his pipe
and said mildly, “What’s the matter
now, Bertha?”

“That nice young man, that Michael
Wheaton, he’ll never want to see Ver-
onica again.” Her voice rose as she
reached the end of the sentence. Had
she only known it, young Wheaton
was to remark later that old Uncle

Manfred was the most likeable mem-
ber of the family.

Veronica was in a screaming mood
too, but she restrained herself. “Un-
cle,” she said carefully, “don’t you re-
alize what people think when you start
talking about spaceships and Mars and
those other fantastic things? This is
the year 1953 — how could you possi-
bly remember things that haven’t hap-
pened yet?” Her voice began to go
shrill, too. “And never will!”

Jimmy sneered, “He’s missing his
marbles,” and earned a glare from his
mother.

“I’ve gone through this before,”
Uncle Manfred sighed, “but I’ll do it
once more.”

He took his pipe from his mouth
and pointed the stem at his sister.
“Bertha, most people have memories
going only one way, into the past;
mine — I don’t know how or why —
goes both ways, since my accident. I
admit that sometimes it’s confusing to
me, but I’m quite lucid. I remember
things that I will do as a young jet-
man in the space service a hundred
years from now; I can...”

Bertha interrupted impatiently,
“But don’t you see how impossible
that is?” she snapped, her face almost
as red as the henna in her hair. “Even
if you could ‘remember’ both ways, as
you put it, how could you possibiy re-
member being a young man a hundred
years from now? You’re fifty-five! A
hundred years will see you dead and
forgotten like all the rest of us.”

He shook his head patiently. “You
don’t understand, Bertha. You see, the
immortamines weren’t discovered until
1960. When I say a ‘young jetman’.
it might be somewhat misleading; ac-
tually, of course, I just looked young.”
He added reminiscently, “Cosmetic
surgery and the immortamines sure
are going to make some big changes
in the world. As a matter of fact, it
was their discovery that drove man
to the conquest of the other planets.

FUTURE Science Fiction

The population increase after death
was conquered was such that we had
to find new worlds.”

Jimmy shook his head. “Sometimes
the old jerk gets me to thinking maybe
I’m batty. First he says it’s going to
happen, then he says it has happened.”
Uncle Manfred looked at him with
mild reproof. “It amounts to the same
thing, just about.”

Bertha’s lips were tight with peev-
ishness. “Please, I refuse to argue fur-
ther with you about this, Manfred;
but I think it impossible of you not
to do what the doctor has suggested.
It would solve everything.”

]_JIS EYEBROWS went up. “You
mean for me to go to the sani-
tarium?” The oldster squirmed un-
comfortably in his chair.

Her little eyes snapped. “Only for
a year or so, perhaps.”

He snorted. “Once they get me In
there again, I’d never get out. They
don’t understand any more than you
do.” He knocked the ashe* out of his
pipe reflectively. “I remember once
on the old Venusian Princess — what a
rusty tub that was! — we had a psy-
chotechnician that had the whole ship
on its ear. By the time we reached
Luna, he had more than two thirds of
the crew confined under guard to
quarters; claimed they all had space
cafard.”

Jimmy asked, “So what happened?
Sometimes you’re better than TV.”
His ferret-like face held Its petulant
sneer.

Uncle Manfred said mildly, “When
we got to Luna, it was found that the
psychotechnician was the only mental-
ly-upset case on board. It just goes to
show — half the time the docs don’t
know what they’re talking about."

Bertha glowered at Jimmy.
“Please,” she snapped, “don’t encour-
age your uncle, James.”

“Whatza difference?” he whined.
“He’s around the corner, ain’t he? He
don’t know the difference.”

Veronica stopped her sobbing and
said, desperation in her shrill voice,
“Uncle Manfred, if we could prove
you’re wrong; that these insane stories
you ‘remember’ aren’t true, would you
go willingly to the sanitarium and let
the specialists try and cure you?”

He clicked the stem of his pipe on
his teeth reflectively. Finally he
sighed, “All right, Veronica; it’s a
deal. If you can prove, to my satisfac-
tion, that I’m er. . .crazy, I’ll go will-
ingly.”

The girl’s eyes gleamed triumphant-
ly. “Now don’t forget!”

Uncle Manfred smiled ruefully.
“You don’t have to worry about my
forgetting, my dear. My trouble is
remembering too much, not too little.”

A NOTHER family conference was
held later that night, but this
time between daughter and mother
alone and in the secrecy of Veronica’s
room.”

The girl explained carefully. “Don’t
you see? If we can get him to go on
His own, we won’t have criticism
from our friends. After all, we could
have him sent, but what would every-
one say? Uncle Manfred is a hero, of
sorts. We don’t know just what hap-
pened at Los Alamos, but the govern-
ment did decorate him; you can’t just
send a hero to an institution.”

“But that’s not all of it,” her moth-
er said petulantly. “If he goes to the
institution, we’ll probably be able to
get his pension to keep the family go-
ing, but you know how little that is;
we’re also dependent upon his other
income.” She quivered heavily in ex-
asperation. “If only we knew Its
source — just where he secures the
rest of the money that he gives us; ob-
viously, he doesn’t work.”

For a brief moment a qualm
touched Veronica. “In a way, we
sound coldblooded, mother. After all,
it’s Uncle Manfred’s money that sup-
ports us. And here we are. . .”

Her mother interrupted impatiently.

PLEASE TO REMEMBER

“Please, darling; I think I’m better
qualified than you to discuss my own
brother’s welfare. He’ll be happier in
a sanitarium where he can . . . well,
where he’ll be able to be with others
like himself.

“Besides, I must think of you chil-
dren. Young people today must have
all the advantages if they are to keep
up. Since your father’s uh . . . disap-
pearance, life has been a great burden
to me, Veronica, a great burden. Now
the problem, obviously, is to get your
uncle to go willingly to the sanitarium,
assigning, during his stay there, not
only his pension but this other income
of his — wherever it comes from.

“Of course, while your Uncle Man-
fred is in the institution we shall pray
every night for his recovery.”

“Of course,” agreed Veronica ear-
nestly.

Jimmy stuck his ferret-like head in
the door. “You still talkin’ about Un-
cle Manfred?” he whined. “He’s
screwy; everybody says so.”

They glared him into silence.

Everything went quietly the next
morning at breakfast, except for a
mild protest from Uncle Manfred that
the oatmeal hadn’t been neo-vitamin-
ized.

Veronica pounced on the statement.
“There,” she shrilled, “don’t you see,
Uncle? There is no such thing as neo-
vitaminized. Doesn’t that show that
you’re. . .well, unbalanced?”

His eyebrows went up in surprise.
“There isn’t?” He wrinkled his fore-
head. “Guess you’re right at that; the
process wasn’t discovered until 1955. I
always was bad at dates.”

Bertha’s chins trembled in exaspera-
tion.

Jimmy sneered, “The old jerk was
tellin’ me this morning that we wasn’t
going to have to brush our teeth
after 1963. They’d just stick stuff in

the drinkin’ water that’d keep your
teeth clean.”

His mother scolded him absently
and half-heartedly. “Please, dear, you
mustn’t talk that way; you might hurt
your uncle’s feelings.”

“Not at all,” Uncle Manfred said
mildly.

But the campaign to put Uncle
Manfred into a sanitarium where he’d
be “happier with people like himself”
didn’t progress any too well during the
next week. The theory was to con-
vince the old boy that he was wrong
but it didn’t work out any too well.

It was something like an argument
between a Baptist and an atheist.
Both knew they were correct, but
neither’s argument admitted of satis-
factory proof to the other. Bertha and
Veronica couldn’t prove that Uncle
Manfred hadn’t memories of the fu-
ture; but, on the other hand, he
couldn’t convince them that he had.

'"PHE CLIMAX came as a result of
an accident, since it was only an
accident that Veronica stumbled upon
the magazine in Jimmy’s room. She’d
called him twice in regard to mowing
the lawn and finally came seeking the
brat out.

He should have been in his room,
but he didn’t seem to be; the bed was
mussed, as though someone had been
sprawled upon it, but there was no
sign of Jimmy. A magazine lay on the
bedspread.

Veronica sighed with disgust.
“Dumjoundmg Stories, indeed 1 No
wonder he brings home such report
cards,” she shrilled.

That brought indignant response.
“What’d’ya mean?” Jimmy whined,
sticking his head out of the closet.
“That mag is plenty educational.”

She whirled, and he suddenly re-
membered that he’d just revealed him-
self. “Aw cripes,” he mumbled, “I
don’t wanta do the grass. Why don’t
you get the old jerk to do it? He
wouldn’t know the difference.”

FITI KE Science Fiction

Veronica took up the magazine and
shuddered at the cover, but then her
eyes narrowed. ‘ “The Mars-Callisto
Run’, by Jets Larsen.” Her forehead
wrinkled. “That sounds familiar,
somehow.”

“It’s a swell mag,” Jimmy was whin-
ing. “I got to readin’ it after listenin’
to all that hooey that Uncle Manfred
gives out with.”

Her eyes went wide. “Uncle Man-
fred!”

She flipped hurriedly through the
pages, triumphantly opened to the
story whose title had puzzled her, and
let her eyes run through it rapidly.

“Jimmy,” she shrilled, “go get your
uncle and tell him that mother and 1
want to see him in the parlor.”

Something in her voice called for
obedience. He scooted out of the room,
and she followed more slowly, her
forehead still wrinkled with thought,
but her eyes beaming satisfaction.

Uncle Manfred came in cheerfully,
his foul briar making its presence
known throughout the room in sec-
onds. Both Bertha and Veronica sat
primly, their hands in their laps, sat-
isfaction oozing from them. The mag-
azine lay face down on a coffee table.

“You wanted to talk to me?” he
said easily.

Veronica leaned forward trium-
phantly. “Uncle Manfred, you remem-
ber the bargain we made, don’t you?
That you would agree to go to the
sanitarium if we could prove your...
well, your memories of the future
aren’t memories at all.”

“I remember,” he agreed, making
himself comfortable in a chair, “but,
of course, the bargain isn’t exactly
fair on my side.”

“What do you mean,” Bertha
snapped, her chins quivering in agita-
tion. “You promised...”

He waved his pipe stem at her neg-
atively. “I’m willing to stick to it, but,
you see, I know I’ll never go to the
sanitarium again.”

“Please,” she snapped, “why?”

He shrugged and put his pipe back
in his mouth. “Because I can’t re-
member doing it.”

“Like a fruitcake,” Jimmy sneered.
“They don’t come any nuttier.”

\7ERONICA took a deep breath.

’ “But you’ll admit, Uncle Man-
fred, that if I can prove these mem-
ories of yours aren’t memoriest of all,
you should go to the sanitarium?”

He nodded agreeably.

She took up the magazine. “Uncle,
I don’t know why you’ve been read-
ing these awful things, but, obviously,
this is where you’ve been getting your
impressions.”

She turned to “The Mars-Callisto
Run”. “Now here’s a story about a
young jetman of the future whose ship
crashes on Ganymede, and for nearly
a year the only earth food they have
is chili-peppers. This is exactly the,
same nonsense you told Michael
Wheaton the other night.”

Uncle Manfred looked embarrassed.
“What’s your point, Veronica?”

She shrilled excitedly, “Can’t you
see? The experience didn’t happen at
all. It’s not a memory or your future;
it’s a story by” — she glanced quick-
ly down at the magazine again —
“by Jets Larsen, and you must have
read it somewhere.”

He took his pipe from his mouth
and ran a hand through his hair in ir-
ritation.

Bertha jumped into the breech, her
chins quivering in excitement. “There’s
the proof, Manfred. Now will you do
what we say?”

He got to his feet in disgust.
“Proof, nonsense,” he snorted. “I’m
Jets Larsen. Just for something to do,
I occasionally write up one of my ex-
periences and sell the story to a sci-
ence-fiction magazine. If you’ll look
in the back of the magazine at the fan
letters, you’ll find that I’m one of the
most popular authors in the field.
Why not? My stories all sound au-
thentic, because they are authentic.’’

PLEASE TO REMEMBER

Veronica slumped back into her
chair, reduced to shocked silence.
Bertha said, “Then this proves noth-
ing at all Manfred, nothing; I still
say it’s all your imagination, and if
you really loved — ”

“Cripes,” Jimmy sneered, “I
wouldn’ta thought the old crackpot
was up to it.”

“Please," James, Bertha reproved
half heartedly, “You mustn’t talk like
that to your "dear uncle. Don’t you re-
alize that he might possibly resent it?”

Uncle Manfred took the pipe from
his mouth and smiled at the two of
them. “Don’t bother, Bertha; you’d
be surprised how little I mind. In
fact, the frogs in my bed, the cut up
rubber in my tobacco, the thumb-
tacks in my shoes, and even the oc-
casional hotfoot, don’t irritate me es-
pecially.”

He returned the briar to its place
between his teeth and puffed content-
edly. “Ever since youi husband ran
off and left you — by the way, I never
thought he had it in him — and I came
to take care of you, I knew what it
would be like. But, I thought it was
more or less my duty; and, as I said,
it doesn’t irritate me especially.

“You see, a person who can re-
member the future as well as the past,
has a considerable advantage; he can
contemplate the fate of those around
him.”

Uncle Manfred smiled almost fond-
ly at Jimmy. “You little will-be jail-
bird, you.

His smile turned forgivingly on his
sister. “And stop worrying about your
social position, Bertha; you’ll be able
to forget about it after Jimmy is sent
up as a juvenile delinquent and after
Veronica gets desperate and marries
that fruit-peddler.”

The three of them stared at him,
speechless and unblinking.

“By the way,” he said, “the whole
routine around here seems upset since
you’ve been trying to prove my insan-
ity, and I notice that the mystery of
my five hundred a month also agitates
you. Possibly this will clear things
up.”

He took an envelope from an inner
pocket and tossed it to Bertha’s lap,
then strolled leisurely from the room.

“He’s crazy,” Veronica sobbed,
“he’s crazy, mother.”

“Brother, his roof really leaks,”
Jimmy sneered.

Martha took up the envelope and
drew the letter from it, almost fear-
fully. She read, blinked, then reread.

“Well, what is it, mother?” Veronica
shrilled, “More of his insanity?”
Martha said, “It’s from the Presi-
dent of the New York Stock ex-
change. It says, ‘Dear Sir: Please find
enclosed your monthly five hundred
dollars, which we pay you, as agreed
in return for your abstaining from
stock-market speculation. In view of
your abilities, which could easily dis-
rupt the entire financial system, let us
again thank you for being so moderate
in your demands.”’

Another Unusual Tale
by Mack Reynolds

ADVICE FROM
TOMORROW

is in the big August Issue of

SCIENCE FICTION QUARTERLY

The things that a precocious kid — with the
best, and most constructive of intentions —
will do I

ANYONE HERE
SEEN HERBIE GREEN?

by Robert K. Ottum

( illustrated by Paul Orban)

ON. J. EDGAR HOOVER
Director

Federal Bureau of Investiga-
tion

Washington, D. C.

Dear Mr. Hoover:

I’ve told your agents the same story
three times now, and still they don’t
seem to believe me; so I guess I’d
better take this thing right to the top.
If it goes on like this, some senator
will hail me up before a Congressional
committee. You’re my last hope.

To start with, little Herbie Green
might have pulled off the whole de-
ception if he hadn’t grown bored with
it all, and started a house on fire sim-
ply by pointing his finger at it — or
put the history teacher into a death-
like trance which lasted 33 days. And
wherever Herbie Green is now, I’ll
bet he’s paying for making those mis-
takes.

It’s hard not to start in the middle,
Mr. Hoover, or where Herbie hi-
jacked the... well, the recipe... but
I’ll try to get it down in one-two-three
order. You see, as principal, I was
there from the first day little Herbie
showed up at Emerson school, all
blond and cherubic, with his transfer-
papers pinned to his coat. Most chil-
dren are accompanied by their par-
ents, but sometimes they start school

alone, and we try to make them feel at
home.

Those transfer-papers are right
here on my desk now, and show Herbie
Green came from Baltimore ready for
the sixth grade. Good marks, excellent
deportment and all that.

But, Mr. Hoover, I’ve since checked
the Baltimore school system and found
out the truth: there was no Herbie
Green.

Right from the start, he was dif-
ferent.

He showed an unusual interest in
sex. And I’ll bet he’s paying for that
right now, too.

I’ve thought back and it always
comes out the same: the first words
I remember Herbie saying to me were
not, “Hello, Mr. Pratt,” or “I’ll study
real hard, Mr. Pratt,” but instead,
“Hey, Pops, let me borrow that book
there on Reproduction of the Species.”

And I was so amazed I almost
loaned it to him. “Now why in the
world would a youngster like you
want to borrow that book?”

“I’m going to be a doctor when I
grow up.” Herbie played it deadpan.

“Fine. Fine. Grand. I’m glad, son.”
I fished up the first excuse which
came to mind. “But first, Herbert,
there are many things you must study.
You’ve got to take things in their
stride, son. There’s history and arith-
metic, then simple hygiene and ...”

Herb!* pointed at the house, and It burst
into flame . . .

“I know all that.”

“You...”

“What I mean is — I feel I’m ready
for more advanced stuff.” Herbie
looked as though I had caught him in
a lie.

Frankly, Mr. Hoover, Herbie did
know all the answers. He could rat-
tle off world history; he knew his
multiplication and verbs, and I still
have on my desk a theme which starts:
“Assuming that a hydrogen reaction
would form a chain of destruc-
tion . . ”

That from a sixth-grader. I gave
him an “A” on it and hoped it was
correct.

But Herbie’s Intellect was Herbie’s
undoing.

r yHREE DAYS after he started
school, my office was ransacked.

I came back from lunch and found
the room looking as if a tornado had
wheeled through the tiny space. (It’s
not a big office like yours, Mr.
Hoover). Papers littered the floor; the
books had been pulled out of the book-
case — some of them with pages ripped
out and naked binding showing; and
the drawers on my desk hung out like
tongues. The office safe was hanging
open. The money — about three dol-
lars and some pennies — was still there
in plain sight.

But the health records, with in-
timate details on every child in
Emerson school, were missing.

The safe-hinges looked as if they
had been melted right off; yet I know
it would have taken a gigantic blast
tc open that old Akron-built job.

There had been no blast.

And the history-teacher thing hap-
pened right then.

Pari Jones came running into my
office when he saw the damage. He
did one fast double-take and said:
“Why I know who did this. I saw him
leave just before you came back. It
was. . .”

Mr. Hoover, I think I must have
screamed right then.

I yelled because Pari suddenly
stopped talking and his eyes rolled
back in his head. He went sort of
slack-jawed and choked for breath.
Then he slumped to the floor.

The whites of his eyes were still
showing when the ambulance crew-
men carried him out.

They said he was dead.

But the doctors picked up a faint
flutter of heart and pumped Pari full
of adrenalin or something. He stayed
that way for thirty-three days, Mr.
Hoover, and he didn’t move a muscle.
They fed him through a rubber tube
In his arm. I couldn’t stand to see him
like that, and I only visited him once.

The detectives came back every day
for two weeks, and they promised

FUTURE Science Fiction

every day they’d find the burglar. We
questioned the children singly, in
groups and by classes. Because of the
way the safe had been melted down,
the police discounted the kiddie the-
ory. But no matter how many times
they photographed the office, or
analyzed the safe, or lifted prints from
everything in sight, they still lacked
the most vital item:

Motive.

“Do you know anything about it,
Herbie?”

“No, Mr. Pratt, I don’t.” He had
dead-panned it again, his blue eyes
wide open. “I think it was an interna-
tional ring of jewel thieves who used
your safe for a smuggling hideaway
and. . .”

“All right, Herbert, that will be all.
Thank you.”

But it didn’t end there, Mr. Hoover.

HpHE TRI-STATE Laboratories were
ruined overnight.

And that’s where your men came in.

Even the out-of-town newspapers
carried stories about the mysterious
raid which turned the laboratories into
a wreck. Its files were scattered; the
safe containing secret and classified
materials had been melted right down;
all the formula bottles had been
spilled, and the floor was sticky and
slippery with chemicals. You know, we
could only guess at it, but there was
talk around town about uranium and
atomic secrets being stolen. Then you
sent the two agents into town.

Tri-State used to handle all sorts of
research for livestock breeders and
farmers; issue monthly reports on
grains and ores, take blood-tests. They
also handled metals, and handled some
U. S. contracts on secret data.

“What do you think about the
burglary, Mr. Pratt?”

“Huh? Oh, it’s you, Herbie. It looks
serious.”

“Has anyone released any informa-
tion on what was stolen?”

“No. The investigators are keeping
it pretty much a secret. Frankly, I

don’t think they know — after seeing
all the mess in the laboratories.”

I could have sworn Herbie looked
relieved.

And the next day Herbie dissolved.

He had poked his curly head into
my office. “Mr. Pratt?”

“Hmmmmm?”

“I’d like to speak to you for a mo-
ment.”

“Come in, son.”

“You’ve been wondering about the
burglary at Tri-State.”

“Why, yes, I suppose we all
have ...”

“Well, I’ve got the answer.”

“Hmmmm?”

“But I haven’t much time, so I’ll
have to tell it to you fast.”

I nodded in a go-ahead manner.

“No doubt it’s occurred to you the
Tri-State was raided by person or per-
sons in search of some vital, war-mak-
ing secret. The newspapers all hint
darkly about how we’re all in new
danger.”

Herbie paced a little, looking sud-
denly more grown up.

“But had it occurred to you the
burglary might have been for some
nobler, more worthy purpose? No,
probably not. But let me put it this
w'ay :

“Suppose there was life on another
planet. Now, don’t look so surprised;
science- fiction writers have to make a
living, and besides, that was purely a
rhetorical question. Suppose this life
was far advanced — so far advanced,
in fact, that atomic and hydrogen se-
crets went out with high-button iso-
topes.”

Are you with me, Mr. Hoover?”

“Then suppose, in searching out all
those scientific mysteries, all these
wise minds one day found they’d over-
looked one thing in dealing with radio-
active materials. One thing so simple
that everyone thought that everyone
else had taken the proper precautions.
Strictly a sophomoric mistake, but

ANYONE HERE SEEN HERBIE GREEN?

they made it. And suppose they dis-
covered that folly too late?”

“You don’t mean. . .”

“Precisely. The leaders on this
planet found that, after long years of
working carelessly with radioactive
substances, they had in effect secured
their own future and at the same time
destroyed it. They were destined to
die off. . .because everyone on the
whole damn planet was sterile!”

He said it like a punch line and I
got it the same way.

T_TERBIE came closer, his blue eyes
wide and still full of inno-
cence. “Wouldn’t you,” he said, “if
you were faced with the decision,
make an emergency move? You’ve
studied the planet Earth for years,
watched its lazy progress: medicine,
social-sciences, stuff like that. And you
know the Earth has the one thing you
need badly: the formula, the means
for reproduction. You know... test-
tube babies, cells preserved in deep
freeze and all that.” He completed it
with an airy wave, almost like he was
embarrassed.

«J )>

“Wouldn’t you pick a missionary,
someone unsuspected, to go down to
earth and get some of that formula?”
Herbie walked over to the window.
“Honest-to-Pluto, you earth-clowns
make me so mad. You’re so far behind.
I’m so bored with you sometimes I. . .”
He turned and looked at me with a
grin. “Look at this.”

Little Herbie Green pointed one of
his pink little fingers at the house
across the street from the school.

It burst into flames.

In another second, it was covered
with a roaring sheet of fire.

Mr. Hoover, Herbie didn’t even
stay to look. He turned and watched
me stare. “See?” He said.

Then he dissolved.

That didn’t even surprise me after
seeing the house. I just sat there and
brooded, looking at the spot where
Herbie had been.

Then the phone rang.

“Herderson of the FBI, Mr. Pratt.
Remember me?”

“Huh... oh, yes, Mr. Henderson.”
“Thought I’d better report to you
what we’ve found after a pretty in-
tense search. We’ve got our report
back from headquarters and found out
what it was that was stolen.”

Here it comes, I thought.

“It was material on artificial in-
semination, of all things.”

“Yes. Of all things.” I kept think-
ing of Herbie and what he had just
told me. I guessed there’d be a lot
more little Herbie Greens around
again after his project got going up
there — wherever that might be.

“The burglars left behind all sorts
of classified data. Most of it was im-
portant. But, instead, they even took
along some samples on insem. . .”

“I know,” I said.

“You do? In that case, there are
some questions we’d like to ask you.”
“Incidentally,” Mr. Henderson add-
ed, “I can’t understand why anyone
would want the recipe on artificial
breeding of livestock. Breeding cows
and horses and animals is pretty com-
mon stuff, I’d say.”

And that’s what happened, Mr.
Hoover. And I wish you’d call off the
agents now. After all, I don’t know
where Herbie is either, or even if he’s
back in his cosmic home. But when-
ever he is, Mr. Hoover, I’ll bet he’s
got one helluva licking coming some-
time in the next nine months.

Sincerely,

. W. E. Pratt,

Principal, Emerson

★

Shall we continue to trim the edges on Future? If you are
in favor, how about dropping us a letter, or a postcard, and
letting us know how you feel about it?

Special Article

THE PHANTOM PHOENICIANS

by L. Sprague de Camp

MERICANS who do
not know a single
other historical date
are usually aware of
the fact that Colum-
bus discovered the
country in 1492.

Did I say fact?
Perhaps “general-
ly accepted opinion”
would be more ex-
act. For if you go to Portugal, you
will, I am told, be startled to see, in
Lisbon, on the Avenida de Libertade,
in the mosaic of the pavement, the
words:

TOAO VAZ CORTE-REAL DES-
COBRIDOR DA AMERICA—
DESCOBERDA DE AMERICA
1472.

Your surprise would be quite justi-
fied. Here you have been taught all
these years that Colmbus did it, and
now these Portguese are claiming that
somebody you never heard of, this
Joao Vaz Corte-Real, was the true dis-
coverer, and that he made his discov-
ery twenty years before Columbus
touched at Guanahani.

As a matter of fact, a great many
people in both Portugal and Brazil
take the Corte-Real theory seriously
and teach it in their schools. Not only
that, but the Corte-Real theory is only

one of a number of opinions, hypothe-
ses, and cults, which flourish in Latin
countries and which purport to prove
that Columbus’ voyage was not what
it seemed. These beliefs have some-
thing of the place in Latin countries
that pyramidology, Baconianism, At-
lantism, and the search for the Lost
Ten Tribes have in the Anglo-Saxon
world. Either they assert that Colum-
bus was not the first discoverer — that
he was anticipated by Corte-Real or
some other fifteenth-century Portu-
guese; or by the medieval Norse or
Welsh; or by the Chinese, or the an-
cient Phoenicians; or by the mythical
Atlanteans — or they claim that Colum-
bus himself was not the person he is
supposed to have been. Instead of be-
ing, as everybody thought, a Genoese
travelling drygoods salesman turned
sea-captain, he was a Portuguese, a
Spaniard, a Corsican, a Majorcan, a
Frenchman, a German, an Englishman,
a Greek, an Armenian, or a Jew of
variable nationality.

What sort of evidence are these
ideas based upon? Sixteenth-century
travel-tales, medieval legends, inscrip-
tions found here and there in the new
world, and such cryptic relics as the
Round Tower of Newport, Rhode Is-
land.

To begin with, we may take it that
the story that the Norse discovered
North America about the year 1000

A. D. is substantially true, despite
Lord Raglan’s effort, some years ago,
to show up Leif Eiriksson as a mere
sun-god. While the sagas that tell of
this discovery may contain some fic-
tional elements, it is most unlikely
that, they could have hit upon so ac-
curate a description of the North
American natives: “Dark men and
ugly, with wide cheeks,” fighting with
clubs, bows, and slings and obviously
ignorant of cloth, iron, or cattle, un-
less somebody had been there to see.

Then how about the others? Let
us take up the remarkable Corte-Real
family first.

All that is known for certain about
Joao Vaz Corte-Real (“Joao,” Portu-
guese for John, is pronounced
“zhwow” with the final diphthong na-
salized.) is that he was a fifteenth-
century Portuguese gentleman who be-
gat four sons, of whom three became
famous. One, Jeronymo, was a noted
soldier, poet, and painter; two, Caspar
and Miguel, were explorers. Caspar
did discover Laborador in 1501, but
was lost at sea on the way home. The
next year, Miguel set out in the direc-
tion that the surviving members of
Caspar’s expedition said that they had
gone — and disappeared. Nothing more
was heard of him, so that the Atlantic
has one genuine mystery from this
period, as well as all the spurious ones.

That is, nobody heard of Miguel
Corte-Real again until. . .

But before we go into that, let’s
finish with old Joao Vaz. The only
evidence for his having ever been to
America is a very unreliable book of
anecdotes and gossip, “Saudades de
Terra”, which one Gaspar Frutoso
wrote about a century after this al-
leged voyage. This book, quite worth-
less in all other respects, asserts that
Joao Vaz Corte-Real sailed with Al-
varo Martins Homen (pronounced
“o -may!’ the final diphthong being na-
salized.) and discovered Newfound-
land in 1472. This account Is too flim-
sy to b« taken seriously by anybody

unmoved by patriotic pan-Lusitanian
sentiments.

There were a number of other
claims to anticipation of Columbus
during the fifteenth century, as by
Fernandes and Barcelos, or by Teive
and Velasco. These stories have a cer-
tain adventitious plausibility because
of the fact that, when they are sup-
posed to have taken place, Portugal
was actually sending out expeditions,
under a veil of secrecy, in order to ex-
tend her colonial possessions. How-
ever, the particular claims to anticipat-
ing Columbus turn out to be individu-
ally pretty feeble when examined close-
ly. Thus Teive and Velasco were sup-
posed to have sailed west from the
Azores in 1452 and to have reached
the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.
One trouble with this claim is that
they would have had to sail into the
teeth of the prevailing westerlies, and
against the Gulf Stream all the way —
which, with the ships of the time,
would have been impractical. To get
across with any degree of certainty,
you had to do what Columbus did:
drop down south to the Canaries; sail
west before the trade winds and helped
by the Equatorial Current; and then
to get back work north to around the
latitude of Baltimore to pick up the
prevailing westerlies.

TTIEN THERE is a family of talej
about Welsh discovery of Ameri-
ca. This is the saga of Prince Madoc
ap Owain Gwynedd, (pronounced
“givun-e dh.”) Madoc seems to have
been a real twelfth-century Welsh
prince, a noted sailor and fisherman,
but a person about whom practically
nothing else is known.

The Madoc myth, however, sprang
into being in the years 1583 and 1584,
in the form of books by Sir George
Peckham and Humphrey Lhoyd. These
books told how Madoc, disgusted by a
war raging between his father and
brothers, sailed away with some fol-
lowers Into the Atlantic. He returned

FVTl IRE Science Fiction

some time later, telling of a fertile
country beyond the seas, gathered a
larger group of colonists, and sailed
away again, this time for good.

There is no outside corroboration
whatever for this story, aside from
the stories of Peckham and Lhoyd.
Why should these men make up such
a tale? Because England was just
awakening to the fact that she had
been so preoccupied during the last
century, with religious wars and revo-
lutions, that the Spaniards and Portu-
guese had gotten a long start on her
in overseas conquest and colonization.
Therefore anything that purported to
prove that Englishmen — or at least
Britons — had discovered America be-
fore Columbus was sure to be popu-
lar; it afforded Queen Elizabeth an ex-
cuse for claiming possessions in Ameri-
ca, and for ignoring the Pope’s gift
of half the non-Christian world to
Spain and the other half to Portugal.

(Here, by the way, is a question
that you can catch people on some
time. What monarch was suzerain of
the largest area in the world’s history?
Not Jenghis Khan; not Emperor Tra-
jan; not Alexander or Harun al-Rashid
or Timur Lenk. He was King Philip
II of Spain and Portugal — the Armada
king, who ruled not only Spain, Portu-
gal, Sicily, southern Italy, the Spanish
Netherlands, and other miscellaneous
possessions in Europe — but had nomi-
nal rule of most of Africa, of large pos-
sessions in Asia (especially Indonesia)
and all of North and South America!
Of course he only ruled effectively
where he had viceroys and soldiers to
enforce his will, and then only to the
extent that they obeyed his orders,
which they seldom did.)

When Europeans first landed in the
Americas and met the natives, they
often jumped to fantastic conclusions
— such as that the Indians were prac-
ticing Hebrew rites, and so were the
Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, or were
speaking Welsh and were the descend-
ants of Prince Madoc’s colonists. In

1704 there appeared a book that told
of how a Welsh preacher, Morgan
Jones, was captured by the Tuscaroras,
and how his life was saved by an In-
dian of the Welsh-speaking Doeg tribe,
a tribe otherwise unknown to ethnolo-
gy. As North America became better
known, the Welsh Indians retreated
before European discovery, flitting as
any good ghosts do from the light of
day. For a time they were identified
with the Mandans of the upper Mis-
souri River, a farming and bison-hunt-
ing tribe a little more civilized and
lighter-skinned than their neighbors
the Sioux and Cheyenne. The Man-
dans’ light skins may have been a
matter of normal inter-tribal variation
in pigment, or they may have been
connected with the fact that the Man-
dans, at this time (the early 1800’s),
had been in contact with French trap-
pers and traders for over a century,
during which time their women had
tendered the ultimate in hospitality.

Hjalmar Holand, the Kensington
Rune Stone man, believes that the
Mandans were descendants of the
Norse expedition to America in the
fourteenth century which he thinks
also inscribed the Kensington Stone
and built the Round Tow T er of New-
port. Strictly speaking the Norse ex-
pedition was to Greenland; it is Mr.
Holand’s idea that they went on to the
mainland.

Be that as it may, a smallpox epi-
demic almost wiped out the Mandans
in 1838, and the survivors settled with
other tribes and lost their identity.
The search for the Welsh Indians re-
sumed, and at last accounts a man
named Pritchard claims to have iden-
tified them with the Kutenai of British
Columbia. The usual argument asserts
(as does Mr. Pritchard) that the In-
dian tribe suspected of Welsh origin —
whether Mandans, Flatheads, or what-
ever — uses Welsh words in its lan-
guage, such as the Welsh word for
“cow,” buwch. (pronounced “bewkh”
or “ice-ookh.”) As there were no cows

THE PHANTOM PHOENICIANS

in the Americas before Columbus, it
is hard to see what any Indians were
doing with a word for “cow.”

TN 1951 A NOVELIST with the good
Welsh name of Vaughan Wilkins
brought out a story, “The City of
Frozen Fire”, based upon the Welsh-
Indian hypothesis. An English family
in the early years of the nineteenth
century goes to South America, where
they find an enclave of medieval
Welshmen living on a small coastal
plain ringed by impassable mountains.
The story has pirates, priceless gems,
volcanic eruptions, and all the other
ingredients of a rousing if juvenile ad-
venture-story.

Another source of speculation about
pre-Columbian transatlantic voyages
was the rumors of the island of Antil-
lia — which corresponded so closely in
size, shape, and location with the real
Cuba that when the latter was found,
it and its neighbors were named the
Antilles. Antiilia was sometimes iden-
tified with the Isle of the Seven Cities,
to which seven Spanish bishops and
their flocks were supposed to have
sailed to escape the Saracen invasion
in 734. This story first appears in
the form of a caption on a globe made
by the geographer Martin Behaim in
1492, and it is repeated in more de-
tail by Columbus’ son Ferdinand; but
there is no evidence that it existed be-
tween the actual Moorish conquest of
Spain and Behaim’s time.

Brazil and California got their names
in similar fashion. There was a mythi-
cal island of Brazil, supposedly a few
hundred miles west of Ireland, and
credited (according to a later story)
with giant black rabbits and an evil
magician who kept castaways captive
in his castle. When Cabral touched at
South America on his way to India he
named the new country Brazil. And
some medieval maps showed an East
Indian island of California, inhabited
by warrior women in golden armor, so
when the Spaniards reached the west

coast of North America they applied
this name to the land they saw.

For that matter the whole naming
of “America” seems to have been
largely a matter of confusion, misun-
derstanding, and plain hoax. There was
a bank-clerk, Amerigo Vespucci, who
worked for the great Florentine bank-
er Lorenzo di Medici. Lorenzo sent
Amerigo to Spain to run a branch
bank, and Amerigo seems to have ob-
tained supplies for Columbus on his
second voyage. In 1503-04 Vespucci
wrote letters to his boss Lorenzo, and
to an old schoolfellow, Soderini, in
which he told of having made four
voyages of exploration. The second
may be true — that he went with Alon-
zo de Ojeda to South America in
1499; at least such a voyage did take
place. But the first and third...

Well, on the first, he said, he sailed
west to about where British Columbia
is in fact and reached the “province of
Parias” on June 16, 1497. He visited
the “Iti people” and returned home,
presumably sailing right across North
America for the second time without
seeing it. On his third voyage he
claimed to have reached a latitude of
13 degrees south, which would strand
him in the middle of the Antarctic
ice-cap. The fourth voyage may have
happened, but Vespucci gave too few
details to tell.

Despite the improbability of the first
and third voyages, a translation of one
of Vespucci’s letters was published at
St. Lie in Lorraine in 1507, and Mar-
tin Waldseemueller, a professor of cos-
mogony at the University of St. Lie,
suggested in a book he was writing
that the new lands should be named
after “that great and good man Ameri-
go” who first discovered them. He
argued thus because the day when
Vespucci claimed to have reached Pari-
as was eight days before Cabot
touched Newfoundland (or Labora-
dor). This would make Vespucci the
first to reach the American mainland,
as opposed to its offshore islands.

FUTURE Science Fiction

Waldseeniueller printed AMERICA in
large black letters on his maps, and
the fashion caught on, despite the fact
that the Spaniards long protested
against the extension of this term to
North America, and despite the pleas-
ing suggestion made by Queen Eliza-
beth’s pet wizard, John Dee, that
North America should be called “At-
lantis.”

It is only fair to say that there is a
school of geographers that hold Ves-
pucci to be a truthful man, even if he
got his navigational data mixed up,
and believes that he did reach the
American coast when he said he did.
But at any rate, this was how the
term “America” came to be applied to
two continents and a republic, joining
that equally ambiguous term “Indian”
in befuddling generations of school-
children.

ANOTHER travel narrative ap-
peared in 1558, when an Italian
named Nicolo Zeno told how his an-
cestors Nicolo and Antonio Zeno in
the fourteenth century went adventur-
ing in the Far North. They served
under one Zichmni, Duke of Sorano,
in Frislandia. Nicolo died, but his
brother Antonio, surviving, heard a
tale from a fisherman of being blown
by a storm a thousand miles to the
west, where he came upon the civilized
country of Estotiland between Green-
land to the north and the land of can-
nibal savages, Drogio, to the south.
Geographically Estotiland corresponds
to the real Laborador. But we can be
quite sure that there was no civilized
society in Laborador in the fourteenth
century. Therefore, while Zichmni,
Duke of Sorano can be identified plaus-
ibly with the real Henry Sinclair, Earl
of Orkney and Caithness, and Fris-
landia with the Faeroes, the Estoti-
land story seems to be a pure tall tale.

Some pursuers of shadowy transat-
lantic voyages have gone back farther
than Madoc — farther even than the
seven bishops, to the ancient Phoeni-

cians. In the 1850’s a German poet,
Robert Prutz, wrote a book in which,
by bending to his service every refer-
ence in Classical literature to islands
in the Western Ocean or possible lands
beyond it, tried to show that the Phoe-
nicians had colonized America back
in pre-Christian times.

These references do exist. Some re-
fer to the real Madeira and Canary
Islands, some possibly (but not prob-
ably) to the Azores, and some appear
to be sheer romancing. As the native
Phoenician literature has almost en-
tirely disappeared, and as there are no
Phoenicians nowadays to ask questions
of, the handiest method of attacking
this question is to ask whether the
Phoenicians could, have made the trip
with the ships of that time.

The answer is no. It is barely pos-
sible that an exceptional storm might
have blown a single ship across the
ocean, but a premeditated round trip
was an impossibility. Their war-galleys
could not have carried enough food
and water to last the rowers the fifty
or sixty days the trip would have re-
quired; and the rowers would probab-
ly have collapsed and perished from
the hardship of trying to sleep in a
ship that had no accommodations for
them to do so. The sailing-ships of the
time, with their single square-rigged
masts and steering-oars of quarter-
rudders, could not tack against the
wind; and the Phoenicians had no
magnetic compass to prevent them
from sailing in circles during the fre-
quent overcasts of the Atlantic.

Nevertheless the Phoenician- Ameri-
can theory has been kept precariously
afloat by the finding of a number of
rocks with cryptic designs scratched
upon them, which some have taken
for Phoenician writing.

Brazil is the place where most of
these petroglyphs have been found, for
the good reason that many Brazilian
Indians have the custom of incising
these marks — sometimes for magical
reasons and sometimes just for fun.

THE PHANTOM PHOENICIANS

The petroglyphs have been studied for
nearly two centuries, and there is no
mystery about them. Ethnologists have
seen modern Indians carving them and
have asked them what they were do-
ing. The carvings are conventionalized
pictures of such things as men, ani-
mals, fish, houses, maps of sections of
the nearest river, and so on.

North America has also turned up
some controversial inscriptions. Aside
from the Kensington Rune Stone there
are the Grave Creek Mound Stone
from West Virginia and Dighton Rock
in Massachusetts. Grave Creek Mound
Stone was thought to be inscribed with
Etruscan, Runic, Phoenician, Old Brit-
ish, Keltiberic, and Greek writing.
Then in 1930 an elderly antiquarian,
Andrew Price, solved the puzzle. The
inscription said simply “Bill Stump’s
Stone, October 14th, 1828.” This bit
of carving was presumably inspired by
the story in Dickens’ “Pickwick Pa-
pers” of the finding of a similar stone
in England, and of the excitement it
caused among local antiquarians until
the inscription turned out to have been
made in his spare time by a shepherd
named Bill Stump. And “Pickwick Pa-
pers” appeared only a year or so be-
fore the date on the Grave Creek
Mound Stone.

As for Dighton Rock, this is a boul-
der or ledge sticking up out of the es-
tuary of the Taunton River in Massa-

chusetts, covered with carvings: dates,
initials, little pictures of turtles, and
marks that look like nothing in partic-
ular. It was credited to Phoenicians,
Druids, Persians, Trojans, Hebrews,
Libyans, Romans, Norsemen, Chinese,
and Atlanteans. Finally in the 1920’s
Professor Edmund B. Delabarre went
out with a boat, black filling-material,
flood-lights, and a camera. After much
hard work he made out, under the
carvings of modern campers and earli-
er Indians, the words

MIGVEL CORTEREAL

followed by some letters that he took
to be initials of REX INDIORUM
(“King of the Indians”) and the date
1511.

So it seems that Miguel Corte-Real
was not drowned on his expedition af-
ter all. Even if his father never reached
America, he did. Presumably he was
wrecked, but survived, and set him-
self up as a chief among the Nara-
gansetts or whoever the local Indians
were And one day he chiseled this in-
scription in the hope that, even if he
never saw another European, the
knowledge of his fate would not be
utterly lost.

So one of the Atlantic mysteries
seems to have been solved, anyway.

★

Ordinarily, You'd Think Wo'd Plug One of the Stories

end you'd be right, nine times out of ten — but this is
the tenth time, the time when an article has already
brought in such glowing praise, that we want to draw
your attention to

THE EVOLUTION OF SCIENCE FICTION

by Tom Clareson

it’s but one of the many topflight features in

SCIENCE FICTION QUARTERLY

August issue now on sale at all stands

IXTL IGO, S ON!

by Raymond E. Banks

( illustrated by Milton Luros)

What else could Bosworth do, since he'd built up
credit on Ceres, and the only thing that they'd
permit him to take home with him was a person?
And how could he explain this surplus redhead,
who was supposed to represent his profits?

A T TIMES, James Bosworth
pinched himself on that return
trip to earth. “I am under the
impression,” he told himself, “that I
am returning to earth as the sole owner
and proprietor of one young female,
aged twenty, with red hair, blue eyes
and an excellent figure. This is ob-
viously an illusion.”

But the admiring glances of the
other male passengers, the envious
comments of the o.her women passen-
gers on the Ceres-to-Earth rocket as-
sured him that it was no illusion. The
girl sat straight and silent by his side
quite content and unworried.

“Since this is no illusion,” he told
himself. “Since she really exists, we
come to problem number one:

“My wife.

“This brings us to problem number
two:

“My boss, my job and my future.”
Then he sighed and wandered into
the bar. He hoped that when he came
back the redhead would be gone, or
that some aggressive male would steal
her from him. Neither happened. The
rocket was less than a half-day from
earth now, and it was not only likely,
but inevitable that when his wife met
him at the rocket-port, he would still

be encumbered with the redhead.

A couple of times he had tried to
bring himself to giving her to a care-
less crew member. All that he would
have to do, he knew, was sign over the
Contract paper and the girl, with a
shrug, would go willingly. But that
solution was too dangerous.

After all, she represented his ex-
pense-account money on his selling
trip to Mars, Ganymede and Ceres.
Eleven hundred and forty dollars and
fifty-two cents, to be exact. It was just
that the rate of exchange was uncertain
between planets.

“Except for you,” he told the girl,
“I have had a very successful trip. I
have taken orders for ten Peerless
Oxygen Makers on Mars, fifteen on
Ganymede and forty-one on Ceres.” He
paused and studied her serene face,
the cream-skinned cheeks with the
good-looking freckles, “With attach-
ments,” he nodded. “Old Dugan said
I couldn’t sell on my first trip in
space. He said I was too young and too
dumb. I have proved him wrong.”

“Ixtl igo,” said Marie, the last of his
expense account.

“Don’t give me ixtl igo,” he said.
“When my wife sees you, she’ll give us
both ixtl igo — and maybe a frppp.”

There was a look of sane good humor
in the girl’s face. She didn’t exactly
smile, but Bosworth had the irritat-
ing idea that she understood exactly
what his problem was and enjoyed his
distress.

“Ixtl frpp,” she murmured in a se-
ductive fashion that always brought
out the hackles on his neck. A Cerean
girl could do that, for they all had
sultry voices. Even the clothes were
objectionable, for this girl wore dainty,
filmy black things that set off her
clear skin and red hair in an astonish-
ing fashion.

“Ixtl frpp,” said James, “is what
worries me. Old Dugan will skin me
when he sees you. He’ll fire me. He’ll
blacklist me for booting around his ex-
pense account. He may even prefer

charges against me.” Bosworth closed
his eyes and shuddered.

TT HAD ALL been so simple when
he left New York. With him, be-
sides samples, Bosworth had taken
enough food to last him the trip, and
enough clothes, and there was even
room for a few books and a deck of
playing cards. That of course was the
rule of space-travel in these still-imma-
ture days of interplanetary contact.
“Take what you need. It is a long way
home.”

But there was the problem of extra
expenses. Old Dugan, glowering at
him over the fat bulk of his stomach,
handed him a voucher for eleven hun-
dred and forty dollars and fifty-two
cents.

“If you waste a penny of this,”
said Old Dugan, “I’ll follow you to
Arcturus and cut your heart out.”

Old Dugan was the Sales Manager.
He was onto what he called the tricks
of salesmen. He had been known to
call half-way around the world to veri-
fy the price of a dinner in a hotel res-
taurant. Beneath the hard upper reach-
es of his bald-shiny head lay a deadly
calculating machine that easily thwart-
ed spendthriftism.

Old Dugan had one other pet hate.

“If ever,” he told his men, “you
so much as wink at a waitress I’ll have
you sent to prison. We want clean,
moral men here — that is why we pay
the best salesmen’s salaries in the
world.”

And it was true that Old Dugan
could make trouble for a salesman he
fired. He had done so in the past. He
was vindictive, as shown by his treat-
ment of Bill Moss who dated a cus-
tomer’s secretary. Unable to get evi-
dence, Old Dugan had spent a goodly
sum to hire a showgirl to tempt Moss
and had created a front-page news-
paper scandal that had broken up
Moss’ home and made him complete-
ly unemployable for about two years.

This was not hard to understand,

FUTURE Science Fiction

since Old Dugan had — once in the
murky past — gone to prison for jug-
gling expense accounts while having
an affair on the road. He was the Re-
formed, and like all wild young men
who survive had become an exceedingly
stern old man.

James Bosworth chewed his finger-
nails. His wife, Ruth, was no slouch
when it came to trouble-making.
She was a fine wife, but she couldn’t
stand to see James look at another
woman — she was not very attractive
and therefore was always on the of-
fense against attractive women. Once,
when James had innocently danced
with a friend’s wife at a social affair,
she had destroyed five hundred dol-
lars’ worth of household-furnishings in
a tantrum. Besides paying off his host
and apologizing to all present, Bos-
worth had had to buy her a new fur
coat; he figured that his error had
cost him about twelve hundred dollars
all told.

These, then, were the adversaries
to whom he had to introduce Marie,
the redhead from Ceres. Or if he failed
to do so, he would have to go to jail
for losing the Company’s eleven hun-
dred dollars. He was clearly a victim of
the rate of exchange in space.

/^UT OF THE crowd at the rocket-
port assembled to greet the Pluto
ship, Bosworth had no trouble in find-
ing his wife. The serious look, the
sharp-pointed nose made a perfect
flaw in a sea of faces. She was wear-
ing a ridiculous hat, of course, and
when James saw the imitation-bird
weaving towards him, and heard the
muttered curses of the people she
shoved aside, he remembered again her
sharp elbows with a sense of home re-
covered.

“You were gone long enough,” she
said in that well-remembered, strident
voice which made a man next to him
move away, guiltily.

“Old Dugan was wrong,” he said. “I
had a good trip.”

Behind him, holding her bag of
things, stood Marie. His heart failed
him. But there was no easy way out.
“This,” he said, turning to her, “is
Marie. Marie, this is my wife, Ruth — •
the one I was telling you about. Uh-
ixtl snpp.”

The two females surveyed each oth-
er. There was a shocked silence. Two
dull red spots appeared in the parch-
ment skin that Ruth used to cover her
skeleton. She hefted her umbrella. The
ridiculous bird on her ridiculous hat
trembled. She jabbed Marie in the
ribs with the umbrella point.

“You’ve brought — back — a — wom-
an!”

Marie had been smiling in faint
amusement. Now she looked slightly
startled.

The side of the rocket fell off on
top of James. At the same time there
came a high monotonous shriek in his
ear.

Two rocket-men were standing to
one side of the battle arena.

“Did you see her bash him with
that umbrella?” exulted one.

“Ninety pounds, and she floored him
with a one-two,” said the other.

A policeman touched the speaker’s
arm. “Why,” he asked, puzzled, “is
that lady sitting on top of the redhead-
ed girl, slugging her?”

npHE STEAM-KETTLE was steam-.

ing. Then things cleared for
James, and it was his wife’s high-
pitched voice simmering along at him.
He bathed his aching head with cool-
ing water and tried to listen. They
were finally home. Marie was in the
kitchen baking a banf; Marie was
durable, rugged. Bosworth had a great
deal of respect for Cerean women now.
Hardy people from earth had gone
out to Ceres, and colonized and had
children who were hardy, and Marie
was one of them. The scene at the
rocket-port had not fazed her at all.
Although she only outweighed Ruth by
ten pounds she had resisted Ruth’s

IXTL IGO, SON!

charges, physical and verbal, with a
stoic near-smile, patiently staring Ruth
in the eye and not saying a word.
True, Ruth had leaped on her and
knocked her down; but Marie had
calmly gotten up again, setting Ruth
on her feet and continuing to give her
the level, sane stare.

“O, pioneer stock!” thought James.
“O rugged women, thin-hipped men
of Ceres!”

For it had worked. Ruth’s tantrum
had ended before that level, sane
stare. Ruth had given up attacking the
girl and turned on him. He had
snapped back and they had had a
juicy fight all the way home. Marie
had followed them.

“I am his,” she said in one of her
rare English-speaking moments. Not
for the rugged people of Ceres to waste
good words. “I will do work, be
maid.”

He hadn’t the heart to tell her that
she really belonged to the Peerless
Oxygen Company; and he couldn’t ex-
plain this to Ruth either.

So once home, the girl from Ceres
had prepared supper in a practical,
sane fashion while Ruth threw a tan-
trum in the living room and another
in the dining room. Yet it was all di-
rected at him. A great thought flitted
into his brain, paused and started to
go — but he grabbed it.

Ruth was afraid of that level, sane
stare.

Now she came tearing out into the
kitchen. She had half-packed a suit-
case. “Hear me, James Whitfield Bos-
worth! These are my last words, you
toad! I will not stay in this house an-
other second. I am going to the police.
I am going to send you and that im-
moral hussy to prison. I am going ...”

She started to lift the suitcase to hit
James, but he turned away and sat at
the table. That was the calm, sane
thing to do, since Marie had just rung
the dinner bell. He picked up a fork
and tackled the banf. “Have some

banf, Ruth. It’s very good, a Cerean
dish.”

Ruth snatched the plate and shoved
the banf in his face. In the old days
he would’ve started to spiral into de-
fensive anger. But Marie had taught
him and shown him the way. He
wiped away the banf in a dignified
fashion, giving Ruth a sane, level look.
“Sit down and eat,” he said.

She grabbed the potatoes ready to
hit him again, but his look held her.
“I will not sit at the same table with
an adulterer!” she shrieked.

“Ixtl igo,” said James, calmly.

The close-set eyes were wet, the
pinched face was trembling as she sat
down and began to cry. Suddenly he
felt enormously sorry for this pep-
pery, tiny woman he had married. So
very ugly; so very hostile; so very in-
secure in her ugliness. With it all she
was a woman, and a very good wife,
and he loved her. Whistle he might at
girls with bodies like Marie’s, but this
woman was unique and distinct of her
kind. Her angularity was so singular
— her ugliness so complete that there
was a special excitement about her.
In her ugliness she needed him des-
perately, and it is something in this
world to be desperately needed.
“Please pass the potatoes,” said
James.

Marie, waiting table, started to do
so, but Ruth brought her sharp heel
down on Marie’s foot and passed the
potatoes herself.

J AMES BOSWORTH felt very old
and gone. Somehow he had gotten
through the afternoon and evening
with the dangerous situation at home.
He had even gained, having learned
the level stare technique. But Ruth
was a foothill — now he was about to
face the mountain, Old Dugan.

He sat outside the Sales Manager’s
office with Marie. Inside came a
steady roar, like Niagara Falls, as an-
other salesman, back from Duluth,
went round on the treadmill. He was

FUTURE Science Fiction

trying to explain something about
snowshoes on his expense account. Old
Dugan sounded doubtful. Cheerful,
calm Marie, dressed in an appealing
but oh-so-right-fitting black dress
with cute Cerean ruffles, stared past
him as if dreaming about her own
home, yet completely at ease here.
Wonderful stoic.

The Duluth salesman staggered out,
white-faced. He was carrying a pair
of snowshoes under his arm.

“Do you know what that black-
hearted old pirate told me to do with
these?” he asked James indignantly.
“He told me to — ” Then he saw
Marie. “Oh — excuse, me,” he mut-
tered and hurried on.

James hurried in, fearful of Old
Dugan seeing Marie before he could
explain. Old Dugan, as awe-inspiring
as ever behind the desk allowed a
sneer to creep over his face. James
tried the sane, level look but Old
Dugan merely asked if he were sick.
In seconds it Was the old relationship
with James stammering and chatter-
ing away like a frightened bird. A
ham-like hand stopped him. Old
Dugan picked up his paunch and rest-
ed it on the edge of the desk. His tie
fell away in two parts over the
stomach. He glowered at James.

“Just a minute, son. Don’t give me
gibberish. I want to know about
eleven hundred and forty dollars and
fifty-two cents.”

“There was some difficulty,” began
James.

An inner light sprang in the crafty
tiger eyes. Old Dugan leaned forward.
His enourmous bulk began to curl up
like a taut spring and James felt his
innards turn to water.

“I want to know all about your dif-
ficulties, son,” rumbled Old Dugan.
“I like to hear salesmen’s troubles.”
There was a fly on the desk. With a
sudden flick, Old Dugan slapped his
mighty hand down, turned it over and
carelessly disposed of the remaining
speck. “Go on, son.”

James started talking fast.... “On
Mars, the first stop there was a law
against taking any money out of the
planet. New colony, y’understand,
wants to keep all the money they can
get circulating on Mars. They let me
bring in the eleven hundred, y’under-
stand but I couldn’t take it out — ”

There was a copy of the “U. S.
Criminal Code” on Old Dugan’s desk.
He began to idly leaf through it. His
mouth was a hard slit. He said noth-
ing.

“On Mars,” said James, his voice
shooting an octave higher, “well, I
had to turn my eleven hundred into
a Martian diamond. Diamonds they
let you export. And I took my Mar-
tian diamonds to Ganymede, but on
Ganymede — ”

“I have taken money out of Mars,”
Old Dugan cut in.

“On Ganymede — ” cried James,
“they let me bring the Martian dia-
monds in, but I couldn’t take jewelry
out. They need precious metals for
precision manufacture. The law
says — ”

“When I was on Ganymede, any
fool could take precious metals out,”
said Old Dugan relentlessly.

“ — so I had to trade my Martian
jewels for a Ganymede aircar. I left
Ganymede with the eleven hundred
dollars, as an aircar — ”

Old Dugan turned to his intercom.
“Get me the police,” he said to his
girl.

“ — when I got to Ceres,” James
rushed on, “they wouldn’t let me take
out the aircar, because they have very
few material things and they lack air-
cars and they wouldn’t let me leave
with the aircar. In fact, on Ceres, the
only thing they have that’s surplus is
people. They are very poor, rugged,
and short on aircars. But people are
the only things that can leave Ceres.
And so — ”

He felt a creeping paralysis as he
came to the final moment.

IXTL IGO, SON!

“Just lay the eleven hundred and
forty dollars and fifty-two cents on
the table, son,” said Old Dugan. “Then
we’ll see what expenses out of it we
might allow.”

“ — and so I came back with a girl,
a redhead,” gibbered James. “Her
name is Marie, and she has a very
sane, level look, and, honest, I haven’t
laid a hand on her; but she can work,
work, work until we get our money
back.”

'T'HERE VVAS a silence. A look of
mad delight came into Old
Dugan’s eyes. The way a batter feels
when die foolish pitcher throws a
straight one down the middle; the way
a quarterback feels when the opposi-
tion line opens up to the goal line;
the way a bus-rider feels when the
man he stands next to gets up and
vacates a seat that no one else can
reach —

“You brought back — a girl?” asked
Old Dugan.

“ — on Ceres,” whistled James in
terror, “they only have a surplus of
people — ”

“A redhead?”

“I never touched her. My wife will
tell you — Chief, I couldn’t have
touched her — ”

“For the Company’s eleven hundred
dollars, you, a married man, brought
back a good-looking redheaded girl?”

James was out of his seat almost
screaming. “There couldn’t possibly
have been a thing between us. She is
used to nigged men. They are all
pioneers up there, Chief! They are all
good-looking. All of her life she has
stared at nothing but guys with
rugged faces and big muscles. They
all have deep-space sun-tans. I am
just a skinny, white-skinned, loose and
flabby salesman. She wouldn’t look
at me — ”

Old Dugan got up, heaved himself
around the desk. He grabbed James
by the lapels and jerked him up. Their
faces almost touched. “I am going to

plaster you to the wall and frame
you, Bosworth! You’re a card. I am
going to spend eleven thousand dol-
lars in framing you so hard that little
children will shudder at the sound of
your name. I am going to smash you
so completely that the general pop-
ulace will go around scraping the name
of “Bosworth” off tombstones. Bos-
worth — You're Fired.”

With that the volcano began to
erupt. Thrust from the hands of the
master, James sank into his chair and
listened to the rattle and thunder of
smoky fury. The room shook, the
whole building seemed to shake, a
whimpering secretary crept in to take
a personal letter to the Company pres-
ident, there was the sound of running
feet as employees remembered errands
that took them beyond the fire and
sulphur of that dangerous voice.

“And furthermore,” boomed Old
Dugan, “we charge this impertinent
scoundrel with — ”

Marie appeared in the door. She
looked at Old Dugan.

Old Dugan looked at her.

There was a sudden silence.

A blush came to Marie’s cheeks,
spreading prettily in both directions to
her dazzling eyes and her excellent
cleavage. Her lips, usualljr so calm
and sure, trembled. “Madam,” said
Old Dugan, somehow uneasy, “what’s
the matter with you?”

“A fat man!” she breathed in sur-
prise.

Old Dugan surveyed his girth. “My
dear young lady — ”

“A jat manl” cooed Marie, coyly
casting down her eyes. She stretched
out her lovely arms. “On Ceres, noth-
ing but pioneers — thin, hard men. All
the same, thin and hard.”

She looked at James scornfully.
“Not hard,” she said, “but still thin.”

A LOOK OF reverence came into
her eyes. “A big, fat, soft man,”
[Turn To Page 83]

Any student of history knows that
human beings tend to avoid "truth"
as they avoid a plague. But some-
times it's a matter of self-preser-
vation . . .

TO SAVE A WORLD

Novelet of Ironic Destiny
by Irving E. Cox, Jr.

( illustrated by Paul Orban )

EB STARED up
stupidly at the enor-
mous signboard glit-
tering above Persh-
ing Square. The red
neon letters blinked
monotonously, Man
is not meant to leave
the earth! Bring
down the Satsl — C.
J. Bowman. Smaller blue letters ex-
tended an urgent invitation, Join your
local Truth Committee Today. Save
America! Save the World!

Jeb shuddered. In less than five
weeks, the backwater lunacy had be-
come a nationwide hysteria. And the
campaign had still a month to run.

Jeb pushed slowly through the slug-
gish crowd. The night was hot; smog
lay heavily over Los Angeles; sailors,
soldiers, and street-walkers mingled
with the flotsam of the city on the
brick walks of the park. Outside the
Biltmore, Jeb saw a band of men and
women parading in the Truth Commit-
tee uniform — a rough-woven, burlap-
like tunic, belted at the waist with a
cord of hemp. They were bare-footed
and bareheaded and they were singing

the lusty Truth Hymn. Some of them
carried placards lettered in red, Bring
down the Sats! Other signs blazed with
the legend, Shake ojj the yoke oj sci-
ence!

Jeb leaned against the trunk of a
palm and lit a cigarette. A seedy old
man, reeking with the stink of stale
wine, sidled up to him. “Ain’t you
never seen a Committe before. Mis-
ter?” he wheezed.

“I’ve been in Alaska for a month.”

“Working on the new Sat base?”

“Not exactly. I’m a writer; I’ve been
doing a series of articles on the base
personnel.”

“Won’t be no need for that after
Bowman gets elected. He’s got the an-
swer, Mister.” The old drunk glared
furiously at the murky sky. “What do
we need to keep them things up there
for, anyway? They’ll go off someday
and kill us all.”

“My friend, the Satellites have kept
world peace for — ”

The old man spat. “The gov’mint
spends all that dough on ’em. An’ for
what? Tell me that. Mister! So’s you
scientists can play around with stuff

FUTURE Science Fiction

you was never meant to have in the
first place.”

Jeb realized that argument was
pointless; he picked up his bag and
crossed the stream of traffic. The old
man pursued him with his panhandler’s
wheedling as far as the door of the
Biltmore. Jeb went into the quiet bar.
He ordered a straight whiskey. When
he reached for the glass, his hand was
trembling.

A large telescreen hung above the
bar. The program was nearly over, but
Jeb caught the tail end of Cyril J.
Bowman’s daily telecast.

For the past seven elections, no
presidential candidate had made a na-
tionwide tour; far larger audiences
were reached by the all-network tele-
casts. Personal contacts at the grass-
roots level were made by party under-
lings and local candidates for Con-
gress.

Instead of delivering a straight talk
to the voters, as the regular party can-
didates did, Cyril Bowman staged a
panel discussion. Jeb had seen pro-
gram-relays while he was in Alaska.
The format was always the same:
panel-members fed Cyril Bowman
loaded questions, and he responded
with equally loaded answers. The con-
clusion of each telecast was the same.
A massive choir of Truth Committee
members, garbed in the rough-woven
robes, began to chant the stirring
Truth Hymn, while the camera panned
to a close-up of Bowman’s handsome
face.

“And so we close another impromp-
tu discussion of world problems,” the
candidate boomed in his rich, organ
tones. “Truth is everybody’s business.
On this program, we do not give two
sides to every question; that is a
sophistry invented by the scientists to
confuse us. There is only one side to
any issue — the right side; the moral
side; the side of Truth. I give you
that. We invite you to join us in our
great crusade for Truth. There are
fifteen thousand local Truth Commit-

tees. Join one today. Send your week-
ly dues to our National Headquarters.
Do your part to rid us of the yoke of
science. Send two dollars — just two
dollars, folks! — to Truth, New York.
No other address is needed. Truth,
New York. Save America I Bring down
the Sats!”

The words of the Truth Hymn
swelled up loud. Bowman’s rugged,
compellingly honest face faded from
the screen. An American flag fluttered
before the camera until the station
break.

A VERY YOUNG woman sitting on
** a stool beside Jeb pushed her
glass back with a sigh. She smiled at
Jeb. “Wasn’t he wonderful tonight?”
she whispered.

“A fool!” Jeb answered.

“So sincere,” she said, “and genuine!
You just know Cyril Bowman is
speaking straight from his heart.”
“Listen, lady, that man is after just
one thing: two bucks a week from
every sucker he can land.”

She looked at Jeb pityingly. “You’re
very young, aren’t you? And I sup-
pose you majored in science in col-
lege. The propaganda of your profes-
sors naturally blinds you to Truth.”
“If this tripe of Bowman’s is — ”
“Please, don’t raise your voice.” She
ran her fingers gently over his hand.
“I know how you feel; you still live
with the old fear science has taught
us. When we bring down the Sats — ”
“Why the Sats? They’re the only
safeguard we have!”

“Science has led us up a blind al-
ley for generations. Man was not
meant to leave the earth.”

He banged his empty glass on the
bar furiously. “Meant! By whom?
You’re not making sense. How can we
be meant — or not meant — to make a
discovery? These things happen.
They’re the result of the application of
knowledge; there’s no purpose or lack
of purpose — ”

She gave hint a sweet smile and

TO SAVE A WORLD

slipped down from her stool. “Man
will always turn his inventions into
weapons; we can’t change human na-
ture, can we? The solution, then, is
to take away the inventions.” She re-
moved a flimsy brochure from her
purse and pushed it into his hand.
“Come to one of our meetings this
week, please. It’ll do so much to clear
all this muggy science out of your
thinking.”

She left him and Jeb opened the
pamphlet on the glossy surface of the
bar. Beneath a brilliantly-colored
American flag, he read a summary of
the Truth Committee platform. Jeb
spotted every technique of propaganda
in the pattern of words; it was crude-
ly used, blatant, obvious. A moron
should have seen through the jerry-
built contrivance. Yet both the girl
and the park bum had been taken in.
How many others?

A kindly old gentleman in a white
dinner jacket leaned toward Jeb, tap-
ping the brochure with a soft, pink
finger. “Bowman’s hit the nail on the
head,” he confided. “Knock out the
Sats, and we’ll cut our tax burden in
half.”

Jeb groaned. “Sir, the security of
the League of Free Nations — ”

“That’s the nonsense the scientists
have fed us so they can keep their
hands in the pork barrel. Look what
they got us into five years ago — three
billion appropriated for a flight to
Mars! When that failed, they still
weren’t satisfied; another two billion
for an expedition to Venus. And that
was lost, too. Five billion dollars in
cold cash, thrown down the drain in
the name of science!”

“True, we’ve never heard from the
Venusian expedition. But there are a
hundred things that could have gone
wrong! We have to investigate, find
out what happened, correct our mis-
takes — ”

“Five billion dollars of the taxpay-
er’s money for a crack-brained day-
dream of science! Well, there won’t be

any more. The people with common
sense are through being fooled by clap-
trap; the Sats must come down!”

Jeb said deseprately, “For genera-
tions, sir, the Sats have kept the
peace!”

“There won’t be another war. I’m
twice your age, young fellow; I know
what I’m talking about. The Eurasian
Confederacy is having trouble enough
simply holding itself together. If they
make one move, we can lick the hide
off ’em inside a week.”

“Without the Sats?”

“The Sats should never have been
sent up in the first place: Man wasn’t
meant to leave the earth.”

“The Sats exist; we have to take
them into account. You’re not being
logical, sir.”

“No?” The kind old man draped
his arm cozily around Jeb’s shoulder.
“Then I’m proud of it, young fellow.
Logic is another part of the bill of
goods science has jammed down our
throats.”

2 : —

EB MADE his es-
cape from the bar.
In the lobby he reg-
istered for a room
and bought a hand-
ful of magazines.
Alone in his thickly-
carpeted bedroom,
he thumbed through
the publications,
reading the political news.

The two major political parties were
both running highly-reputable candi-
dates, statesmanlike in appearance and
philosophy. On domestic issues they
were apparently in complete agree-
ment. Their only difference revolved
around American participation in the
League of Free Nations. The real news'
of the campaign was reported, with
appropriate tongue-in-cheek humor, in
the “Miscellany” column of Time,

FUTURE Science Fiction

Last week energetic disciples of
Cyril Bowman’s Truth Commit-
tee girded up their burlap skirts
and took a straw-vote in five ma-
jor industrial cities. Result, ac-
cording to the Bowmanites: thir-
ty percent of the popular vote will
go to honest-faced, golden-tongued
Cyril Justinian Bowman.

Jeb threw the magazine aside. How
could they treat it so casually? Was
he the only person who recognized the
danger? Perhaps it impressed him
only because he had been out of the
States for a month. Five weeks ago
the Truth Committee had been an
amusing fringe of comic-relief; now
Bowman claimed a third of the vote!

Suddenly Jeb made up his mind. He
put through a long distance call to his
agent in New York. “Sam? This is
Jeb Williams. I’m in L. A.”

Sam sounded sleepy and irritable.
“Glad you’re home, boy; but why call
in the middle of the night? What’s
cooking?”

“This Hollywood deal, Sam; I
want — ”

“All set, Jeb. Check in at the studio
Monday morning. Best deal I’ve ever
pulled for you. Tech director on three
space-operas.”

“I want to postpone it, Sam.”

Sam was abruptly wide-awake.
“Postpone it? You can’t! And you’ll
never get — ”

“Or call it off.”

“What’s eating you? This means a
thousand a week!”

“I won’t have the time, Sam. You
see, I’m going into politics.” After a
moment of shocked, unbelieving si-
lence, Sarr\ began to splutter indignant
admonitions. “I’ll see you tomorrow,”
Jeb intervened. He replaced the tele-
phone in its cradle, gently.

Before he went to bed that night,
Jeb wrote his first political article, a
precisely-factual analysis of the propa-
ganda in the pamphlet the girl had

given him. He took the morning plane
for New York. At four in the after-
noon he was in his agent’s office.

Sam had cooled off a little in the
interval; and when he read Jeb’s arti-
cle, his amicability was fully restored.
“The Post is crying for something like
this,” he said.

“They understand how serious the
situation is?”

“The editor is aware that Bowman’s
a shyster.” Sam tapped the manuscript
happily. “Maybe it was a good idea,
giving up that Hollywood deal, Jeb;
there’s more dough in this sort of thing
right now. Think you could turn out
one a week until November?”

“Right now, the money doesn’t
matter. I’m going to work for one of
the candidates, if I can.”

“One of the candidates?” Sam re-
peated with heavy sarcasm. “It doesn’t
matter which, I suppose? You’ll just
toss a coin and — ”

“No — so long as Bowman’s defeat-
ed.”

“That idiot hasn’t a chance. But
go ahead, Jeb: have your fling at poli-
tics. Get it out of your system while
you’re young. Shoot along all the com-
mercial stuff you can; if it’s as good
as this, I’ll sell it for you.” Sam fished
a card out of his wallet and tossed
it to Jeb. “Tell you what I’ll do. Kell-
er and I were in school together. I’ll
call him up and pave the way for
you.”

J EB SAW Josiah Keller the follow-
ing morning. He was a tall, white-
haired, courtly gentleman, with a
slight and unobtrusive Southern ac-
cent. As candidate for the opposition
party, he was gracious and attentive.

“I’d be pleased — no, honored! — to
have you working with us, Mr. Wil-
liams,” Keller declared. “And we
could use a writer of your ability.
Yet, my friend, I — I don’t quite see — ”
Keller hesitated, and favored Jeb with
his most photogenic smile. “Now.
mind, any friend of Sam’s is a friend

TO SAVE A WORLD

of mine. But your specialty, Mr. Wil-
liams, is science.”

“I’m a graduate physicist.”

“That’s it, precisely. You have a
flair for popularizing — for explaining
in layman’s language — all the won-
ders of the world of science. I don’t
visualize how that type of writing
would be hepful in a political cam-
paign.”

“Mr. Keller, the technique of sci-
ence applied to the kind of trash the
Truth Committee is reeling out — ”
“But the best answer is silence. The
real issue of this campaign, Mr. Wil-
liams, is the League of Free Nations.
The Administration is moving in two
directions at once: participating in a
de facto world government, and still
pretending to maintain the fiction of
national sovereignty.”

Keller cleared his throat and
launched the booming tones of a stand-
ard oration. “I say, sir, that we must
face the facts squarely. The League of
Free Nations is a reality. We must
willingly and openly sacrifice our sov-
ereignty to the larger unit. In the fore-
seeable future, the League will come to
terms with the Eurasian Confederacy
and we will establish a united world
for the first time in history.”

“But none of that can happen, Mr.
Keller, if our Sats are brought down.”
“Of course not, Mr. Williams! The
Sats give us security. The Eurasian
Confederacy has sent up as many as
we have. Naturally — and a good thing;
it keeps both sides on even terms.
They’re afraid of us; we’re afraid of
them. It’s a delicately-balanced situa-
tion, but it means that we’ve conquered
war. In another generation we’ll learn
how to live in peace.”

“If Bowman is elected—”

“That’s absurd; we’re an educated
people.” Keller glanced at his watch.
“I’ve enjoyed our chat, Mr. Williams;
it’s not often that a politician has a
chance to talk to a celebrity from the
world of science. But I have an ap-

intment with my publicity-chairman]
really should — ”

“Naturally, Mr. Keller.”

“And if you want to join our organ-
ization as a volunteer, we’ll be glad
to have you, sir.”

Jeb walked out of the office, cheer-
less and disappointed. Keller seemed
so right, so sure of himself; for a mo-
ment Bowman’s golden voice was far
away, like the muttering of a garish
nightmare out of the past. “We’re an
educated people,” Keller had said.
Yet. . .was education, per se, an auto-
matic immunity to propaganda?

Jeb visited the Administration head-
quarters later that afternoon, and
made the same offer of his services —
with the same results. Jeb spent fif-
teen minutes with the Party Chair-
man. He listened to Jeb with a cour-
tesy and a courtliness that rivaled
Keller’s; but when Jeb was finished,
the Chairman said, “Frankly, Mr. Wil-
liams, I just don’t picture Bowman’s
propaganda as a campaign-issue. If we
attempt to answer him, we only digni-
fy the charges.”

“Not an issue? Sir, the Truth Com-
mittee already claims thirty percent of
the popular vote!”

“Every campaign, Mr. Williams,
turns up a certain number of odd-balls.
Don’t forget, a third party has never
won an American election.” The
Chairman stood up and extended his
hand. “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this
talk, Mr. Williams; the President, I
know, will be pleased that you’ve vol-
unteered to work with us. If anything
turns up that calls for your rather
specialized talents, I’ll get in touch
with you. You can count on that.”

EB RETURNED to his hotel-room
and sat at the open window, watch-
ing the autumnal dusk close over New
York. He was twenty floors above the
street, but he could still hear the dis-
tant mutter of traffic. Below him, on
the step of a building, a giant mobile
suddenly blazed with light, revealing

FUTURE Science Fiction

an enormous face which crumpled into
a smile every forty-five seconds. Be-
neath the face, red letters demanded,
Bring down the Sats! Join a Truth
Committee Today !

Jeb wrung his hands helplessly. The
threat blazed out from every corner of
the sky, the smooth voice purred on
every telescreen, but the politicians
said, “Don’t dignify the charges by
answering them.”

Only fact could counteract the pro-
paganda, and already one-third of the
nation had been victimized. Jeb knew
he was not the only person who saw
the danger; there must be others, mil-
lions of them. If he could only reach
them, if he could only organize their
opposition —

He remembered Sam’s reaction to
his political article, and he thought
he had his answer. For the next week,
Jeb holed himself up in his hotel room
and churned out one article after an-
other. He read every Truth Commit-
tee pamphlet he could lay his hands
on; he saw every telecast Bowman
made. And he replied to each generali-
zation with specific facts. No para-
graph had literary polish, yet each
surged with a conviction as incisive as
the proof of a geometric theorem. And
Sam found publishers for the articles
as fast as Jeb turned them out.

Three weeks before the election,
Jeb’s first political article was print-
ed. That same day Bowman replied to
it on his daily telecast. His panel
guests were introduced as psychiatrists.
In unctious voices, they explained that
Jeb was suffering a derangement which
they labeled as the “dementia scientifi-
ca.” Using Jeb as a symbol, they pil-
loried all of science.

“Mr. Williams is simply misguided,
spiritually blind,” they intoned. “A
delusion normally no more harmful
than hypochondria, except for the gul-
lible fools who may be convinced by
this Mr. Williams that science stands
for truth.”

Jeb sat watching the telecast in si-

lent rage. To make an effective stand
against Bowman, he knew he had to be
on the air simultaneously with the
Truth Committee — or, failing that, im-
mediately following Bowman’s daily
program. Jeb must counterpose fact
against fiction as fast as the lie was
told — before it became, by default, a
part of the thought-reaction pattern
of the listeners.

Jeb had saved enough money to
pay for one nationwide telecast. But
a one-shot program would be fu-
tile against Bowman’s flood of words.
Since the brunt of Bowman’s attack
had been made upon scientists as a
class, Jeb thought it logical that he
could call upon them for financial
help. For the next two days Jeb made
a whirlwind tour of the universities,
project sites, and industrial laborato-
ries located close to New York.

HE REACTION of
the scientists was by
no means unanimous.

Old Dr. Gray-
meyer said, “Science
is objective, Mr.
Williams; if we
plunge into partisan
debate, we lose our
objectivity and we
would lose, at the
same time, the respect of the public.
Science and politics don’t mix.”

Others talked vaguely of help, but
offered Jeb no money. Mike Oakville,
who had been a classmate of Jeb’s,
declared, “You’ve got to see this thing
from the right prospective, Jeb. Bow-
man can’t win the election. A war-
monger, perhaps, dealing in the old
prejudices, might overthrow the peace
of the world — but not these naive neu-
rotics in Bowman’s Truth Committee.
Not the good people, Jeb; we’re in
no danger from theml”

Jeb’s first real encouragement came
from Dr. Dodge, who had been th4

TO SAVE A WORLD

chairman of Jeb’s doctoral commit-
tee.

“So you think you can do some-
thing about Bowman,” the old man
mused.

“You’ll grant he’s a threat to our
security?”

“Oh ... no one questions that.”
“Keller and the President are very
unconcerned.”

“They’re both intelligent men;
they’re entirely conscious of the dan-
ger. Perhaps they’ve hit upon the best
solution — simply to ignore the Truth
Committee entirely.”

“Then you think I shouldn’t — ”
“Bowman has to be stopped. It can’t
be done by law; he has every right
to campaign for the presidency. May-
be you have the solution, Jeb; I don’t
know. Maybe you’ll fail, too.”

“Fail?” Jeb repeated in a dead
voice. “Fail, when I’m holding facts
up against falsehoods?”

“You’re not just fighting Bowman,
Jeb, but a deeply-ingrained fear in the
human soul. Bowman’s trading in fear.
We’ve lived with it so long we don’t
always recognize the symptoms. Mil-
lions of us are so desperate to es-
cape the fear that we leap at straws;
Bowman seems to give us a way out.”
“By pulling down the Sats?”

“The fear goes back a long way,
Jeb — to a time before you and I were
born. The world was split in half by
political ideologies, the earliest forms
of the Eurasian Confederacy and the
League of Free Nations. On both
sides, we convinced ourselves that we
could not survive unless we destroyed
the enemy. Science armed us with a
fantastic array of nightmare- weapons,
and the targets were always the en-
emy cities. Generations of city-dwell-
ers have grown up with the fear hang-
ing invisibly over their heads: at any
time — tonight, tomorrow at dawn,
sometime next year — sudden death
may leap upon them without warning.
The Satellites were a kind of ultimate
weapon. We’ve almost a hundred "up

there now, swinging in permanent or-
bits above the earth. Forty-five Sats
are ours, with their automatic weapons
trained on the enemy cities — and for-
ty-five are Eurasian, blindly aiming
their destruction at us. A flash of a
radio beam; a slight mathematical
miscalculation of an orbit; even a
large meteor straying innocently into
our skies — anything could set them
off, Jeb, and in an hour every city
would be laid waste. Only the coun-
try towns and villages could survive.
Bowman has his hand on the most
sensitive nerve-center of the human
soul when he says we must bring down
the Sats.”

“There’s no logic to it. Dr. Dodge 1”
Jeb cried. “He’s blaming the ma-
chines — and the scientists who made
the machines — for the things men
might do with them.”

“When you’re afraid, it’s hard to
make such neat distinctions. Bowman
has found a scapegoat, too. Science is
guilty, rather than man himself; some-
how that eases our consciences. Jeb,
even when Bowman is defeated at the
polls — and I rely enough on the ma-
jority judgment of Americans to know
he will be — yet, even then, the dam-
age will have been done. Bowman has
turned our individual fears into a
group neurosis. Millions of us now
believe we can solve our problems by
running headlong back into the past.”
“You admit all that, and still think
we should ignore him?”

“I don’t know, Jeb; I honestly, don’t
know. You have an idea you can an-
swer him on the air. It’s worth a try.”
“Unfortunately, that calls for a great
deal of money.”

“I have time to spare, and a cer-
tain prestige among my colleagues. I’ll
raise the money for you; I promise
that. Go ahead and contract for your
television time. It might help a lot;
or it might — ”

“Might what, Dr. Dodge?”

The old professor smiled. “Do what
you must, Jeb; good luck.”

FUTURE Science Fiction

'T'HIRTEEN days before the elec-
tion Jeb made his first telecast.
He went on the air immediately after
Cyril Bowman’s panel. Jeb had no
preparation, except for notes he had
made during Bowman’s telecast. He
spoke clearly and earnestly, building
a careful structure of truth to shat-
ter the web of propaganda, item by
item.

In the midst of his talk, Jeb looked
up and saw Cyril bowman watching
him from the control-booth. Bow-
man’s round, handsomely honest face
was bland and expressionless.

When Jeb had finished and left the
studio, Bowman joined him in the
foyer. “My car’s outside, Mr. Wil-
liams; let me give you a lift back
to your hotel.”

“It hardly seems appropriate, Mr.
Bowman — ”

“Come, nowl We’re not children.”

As the sleek car slid through the
New York traffic, Cyril Bowman
smiled warmly at Jeb and said, “You
made a good talk today, I think.”

“Tomorrow I’ll do better.”

“Of course, Mr. Williams, because
I’m going to answer you in my broad-
cast. That should give you plenty of
material. Between us, I think, we can
put on quite a show.”

“I’m not interested in the sort of
show I’m doing, sir.”

“Naturally not; you’re defending
yourself and — ”

“I’m attempting to defend the free-
dom of science.”

“Precisely. And we should have
started this debate long ago. But, if
I may, Mr. W’illiams, I’d like to give
you just one pointer on technique.”

“Yes?”

“You tried to squeeze too much
into your talk. The listeners can’t re-
member so many facts at one time.
Keep it simple, Mr. Williams. Take
one point and hammer it home. Re-
peat; repeat; repeat! You’ll never get
anywhere trying to make a logical
answer to every misstatement I make.”

The car came to a stop in front of
Jeb’s hotel and Bowman threw open
the door. “Good day, Mr. Williams;
I’ll see you again tomorrow, I hope.”

After that, Cyril Bowman always
waited until Jeb had completed his
telecast and drove him back to his
hotel. In a sense, the two men be-
came friends. Jeb couldn’t quite un-
derstand how it had happened. For
one thing, when Cyril Bowman was
not in the studio, his personality was
very different. He lost his tone of bom-
bastic oratory; his toothy, salesman’s
smile relaxed. He was mild-mannered,
easy-going, pleasant to talk to. Then,
too, the advice he gave Jeb for im-
proving his telecast technique seemed
to be sound; in a week Jeb’s listener-
mail jumped from a dozen letters a
day to four thousand.

“Why are you helping me?” Jeb
once asked the politician.

“Maybe I’m just quixotic; I hate
to fight an opponent who has a handi-
cap.”

“We’re not playing polite parlor-
games, Mr. Bowman. I’ll destroy your
Truth Committee if I can.”

“I know that, Williams; but I want
you to stay on the air, too.”

“When I prove you a liar a dozen
times a day?”

“With facts and uncomfortable
truths, my friend. That never appeals
to your average man, when someone
else is giving him an emotional answer
that’s more satisfying. Before you
went on the air, I was battling an ab-
straction, a shadow-man called the
scientist. It was tough sledding some-
times, because I had no opposition.
You’re giving my symbol reality;
you’re my stereotype of the enemy.”

“What happens if you win the elec-
tion, Mr. Bowman? Do your Truth
Committees just blast up to the Satel-
lites in shuttle-rockets and start tak-
ing them apart?”

“Frankly, I haven’t given it a
thought.”

“Perhaps you should. Do you know
rfhat follow* when any craft ap-

TO SAVE A WORLD

proaches a Sat without first flashing
the proper landing code?”

“Naturally. The automatic weapons
take over, and the Sat fires its mis-
siles at the enemy cities.”

“The firing of one Satellite sets off
all the others — both ours and the Eur-
asians’.”

Bowman draped his arm over Jeb’s
shoulder. “If I win the election, I’ll
be the government. The Shuttle Rock-
et Corps will have to surrender the
landing-codes to me.”

“The Corpsmen are scientists, Mr.
Bowman — the men you’re trying to
destroy. They might just happen to
respond to this situation with your
kind of emotional thinking.”

The politician smiled. “That would
be ironic, wouldn’t it? But we’ll cross
that bridge in November, my friend,
if I win the election.” Bowman threw
back his head and laughed uproarious-
ly. “If I wan. You know, I do believe
you think I will!”

T TNTIL ELECTION day, Jeb made
an all-network telecast every
day. On three occasions he received
guarded notes of praise from both
the President and Josiah Keller. The
major party candidates were pleased
that Jeb was attempting to reply to
Bowman’s propaganda, although both
publicly declined any direct responsi-
bility.

On the night of the election, Jeb
was invited to hear the returns at the
Administration-headquarters in the
AValdorf. By seven o’clock, the first
scattered vote count w r as in from
parts of New England. They indicat-
ed an Administration victory; the rit-
ual of celebration began.

But within an hour the jubilation
collapsed. Jeb watched in rising fear
as new tallies were flashed on the
telescreen. In rural areas, Keller and
the President divided the vote; but
the city ballots piled up ten to one
for Cyril Bowman. By midnight the
pattern was apparent; the cities had
gone overhwelmingly for Bowman.

True, he had taken only a third of
the popular vote, but with it he cap-
tured the electoral vote of the indus-
trial states, because the rural vote
was divided.

It was clear, shortly, that none of
the three candidates had won enough
of a majority for the presidency. As
the politicians had confidently pre-
dicted, a third party could not win
an American election; but it could
split the vote so that no other candi-
date could win, either.

In the big cities, the robed Truth
Committees swirled out into the
streets, parading with flaming torches
and screaming their Truth Hymn.
The sedate corridors of the Waldorf
were crowded with wild-eyed fanatics
who cried, “Bring down the Sats!
Bring down the Satsl”

The mob broke into the President’s
headquarters. “Concede the election!”
they cried. “Concede!”

The President climbed on a table
and tried to address them, “Go home,
good people; this is no time for riot-
ing. In due course, the election will
be decided by your Representatives
in Congress, in the American way —
under the provisions of the Constitu-
tion. No sort of violence now can — ”

Their angry voices rose to drown
him out. “Decided, yes! By your
party-representatives. Who’ll vote for
Bowman in Congress? We’ve won; we
won’t be cheated. Bring down the
Sats!”

The big telescreen, which was still
recording the election returns, went
suddenly blank. The camera focused
on the harrassed face of a studio an-
nouncer.

“As a public service, we bring you
the following special telecast from the
Truth Committee candidate, Cyril J.
Bowman.” The camera panned to a
close-up of the politician. The mob
in the Waldorf fell quiet as they
looked at their leader. Taking advan-
tage of the distraction, the President
slipped unobtrusively out of the room.

FUTURE Science Fiction

“I speak tonight to members of my
Truth Committee, everywhere in
America,” Bowman said. His persua-
sive smile was gone; his tone was hesi-
tant, uncertain. To Jeb, it seemed to
be edged with fear. “We have not won
the election; we have nothing to cele-
brate. The Constitution provides that
Congress will determine the victor
when no candidate has a majority of
the electoral vote. As loyal Americans,
we must abide by this decision.”

A roar of rage went up from the
mob. “They’ve bought him over!
He’s betrayed us! He promised to
bring down the Sats!”

Someone hurled a chair at the
screen. The glass shattered and the
picture faded. In fury the mob
smashed the furniture in the Adminis-
tration headquarters, pulling the cur-
tains down from the windows and rip-
ping them into shreds. Like a storm
wind, they charged through the debris
and flowed out into the street.

Jeb walked back to his hotel through
a city thrown suddenly into chaos.
Robed bands of Truth Committee
members marched in the streets, sing-
ing their Hymm, drunk with fear and
frustration. Here and there the police
tried to control the mob; but more
often they joined the rioters. And
why not, Jeb wondered: the police
were city-dwellers, too. They had
been reared in the same fear.

YRIL J. BOW-
MAN, tense and
frightened, was
waiting for Jeb in
the lobby of his ho-
tel. “What’ll I do,
Williams?” he de-
manded breathless-
ly. “This is get-
ting out of hand.
They’re rioting in every city in the
country!”

“Did you expect anything else?”
“People can’t be such utter fools!”
“Not fools, Bowman; simply human.
You were the fool, because you knew
better. Or perhaps we were — because
we didn’t take your nonsense serious-
ly enough. But the people aren’t fools.
You deliberately short-circuited the
processes of logic, and threw them
back on primitive emotions for a solu-
tion to a social problem.”

“All right, Williams; I was wrong.”
“What were you after? What did
you think would happen?”

“I — it doesn’t matter any more. The
important thing right now is to undo
the damage.”

“If you can. There’s a small
chance — ”

“I’ll try anything!”

“Buy up all the time on every tele-
vision-network for the next twenty-
four hours. You’ve cleaned enough on
this swindle to pay for it. Then you
and I’ll go on the air together. And
this time, Bowman, we’ll both give the
facts and the unpleasant realities.”

As the two men entered the studio,
they were handed a news-bulletin from
Chicago. National Guard units, called
out to police the city, had joined the
rioting Truth Committees instead. A
second bulletin followed in less than
five minutes. An armed mob of five
thousand was attacking the Shuttle
Rocket Base in California; the Corps,
fantastically outnumbered, was calling
for reinforcements.

“It’s too late for logic,” Jeb said
grimly. “Now we’ve got to save what
we can. Three months ago I visited
the California shuttle-base. I saw
their defenses. From an air attack, the
base is the safest in the world; but
from the ground — ”

“But the reinforcements — ”

“It’s time you faced the truth, too,
Bowman. Your Committee will seize
the Shuttle Rockets; nothing can stop
them now. They’ll try the policy
you’ve taught them, to bring the Sats
down by force. And you know what
happens as soon as they make an un-

TO SAVE A WORLD

authorized landing on a Satellite.”
Bowman ran his hand weakly
across his mouth. “The world goes
up in atomic dust.”

“Not the world, Bowman; just the
cities — the industries and the ma-
chines we’ve taken centuries to create.
All the technology of modern civiliza-
tion.”

“And billions of people — ”

“No, Bowman, not the people.
We’re going on the air, and we’re go-
ing to tell the people to evacuate the
cities. All the people, everywhere,
Bowman. You’ll beam your warning
to the Eurasians. They know less
about you; you have the technique
to persuade them you’re telling the
truth. I’ll take over the networks
here.”

The politician licked his lips. “How
much time do we have?”

“The rocket-base can hold out for
thirty minutes; certainly no longer.
It’ll take your people an hour — may-
be a little less — to get a Shuttle Rock-
et into the air. After that, we have
twenty-two minutes.”

“All told, less than two hours!”
“With luck, we could have a few
minutes more. You’ll know our time’s
up when you see a flash in the sky.
Don’t worry about it, Bowman; they
say it’s painless — at least when you’re
sitting in the center of a target, the
way you’re going to be.”

J EB KNEW the telecast was a des-
perate measure, a shock-treatment
for the social mania Bowman had
sown. With rioters already in the
streets, the cure might push the surg-
ing violence into catastrophic panic.
Jeb spoke emotionlessly and calmly;
over and over he repeated one recur-
rent theme, “Leave the cities. Take
none of your goods; save yourselves.
The things men have built can be
made again, if we save mankind it-
self.”

After fifteen minutes, the news-bul-
letins began to pour into the studio.
The cities were evacuated in surpris-

ingly good order. The Truth Commit-
tee rioters fled when they heard the
news; among them, there was a certain
incidence of violence, but the majority
had exhausted their emotional energy
in reacting to the election returns.
They responded with plodding obedi-
ence to the directions of more responsi-
ble citizens.

The first national reaction to Jeb’s
telecast was angry disbelief, as mil-
lions of people were dragged out of
their beds by their frightened neigh-
bors. But then the President went on
the air to confirm the news of the
attack on the Shuttle Rocket Base in
California; he added the further in-
formation that the air-force had at-
tempted to bomb the base, but the
automatic interceptor missiles had
broken the back of the attack.

Slowly the great lines of automo-
biles moved out of the cities. Per-
haps the most effective factor in pre-
venting chaos was the lateness of the
hour. Jeb’s first telecast was made
shortly before two in the morning.
Most of the people had been in bed
asleep; the warning came to them at
different times, and the people left
the cities in a trickle rather than a
simultaneous flood.

After an hour, Cyril Bowman came
to the studio where Jeb was talking.
He gestured to the control-room engi-
neer to interrupt Jeb’s telecast.
“We’ve done all we can, Williams,”
he said.

“Even if that happened to be true,
it isn’t enough; you left us only a
choice of disasters.”

“I’m sorry.”

The strain had worn down Jeb’s
tight grip on his emotions. He re-
sponded angrily, “You blow the world
apart, and then say you’re sorry!
What did you think you’d accomplish,
anyway?”

“I — I’m not sure any more, Jeb.”

“Was it the money?”

“No.” Bowman ran his fingers over
his lips. “Yes, Jeb. Let it go at that.”

FUTURE Science Fiction

“Or did you want to see your name
in lights? Your face grinning at us
from those rooftop mobiles?”

/'"'YRIL BOWMAN’S poise was gone.

His golden voice was shattered
into a thousand screeching fragments.
“I don’t know!” he wept. “It doesn’t
matter!” With an effort he drew a
long breath and tried to speak more
calmly. “It seemed easy, Jeb. People
were afraid, and the satellites sym-
bolized our fear. If we took them
away — ”

Jeb gasped, “You actually believed
that, Bowman?”

“Science made the mistake, Jeb;
I didn’t! Why did they invent such
monstrous weapons and then threaten
us with them day after day and year
upon year? You tell me I’m blowing
up the world.”

Bowman grasped Jeb’s hand in
trembling fingers. “Did / build the
Sats? Did I put them up in the sky?
Tell me, Jeb: has science ever given
us anything but torment and terror?
I wanted to lead the world to peace —
back to the sanity and normalcy of
our grandfathers’ times. Peace, Jeb!
We could have had it so easily; we
could have been happy again. The rest
of you were so utterly blind!”

Jeb turned away, sick with nausea.
He had his answer, in the torrent of
fervent words, in the fanatical blaze
of conviction he saw deep in Bowman’s
eyes. An honest face, a compelling
voice, an idealism which was obvious-
ly sincere: out of it madness had
forged the pattern of destruction.

After a moment, Bowman said,
“New York is empty. The studio-en-
gineers are leaving now. Hadn’t we
better go with them?”

“They can leave the circuits open,
Bowman. We’re sticking it out to the
end.”

“We don’t both have to — ”

“Perhaps not; leave, if you like. I
hadn’t thought of running out on th#
job myself. There may still be people

somewhere who haven’t heard my
warning.”

Jeb nodded to the technicians in
the control-room to put him on the
air again, and he turned back toward
the camera. As he began to talk, his
voice was hoarse, his throat sore from
the strain. He reached for a glass of
water, and he saw a gleam of metal
in the air. He turned slightly toward
Bowman as the blow struck his
head. . .

•

Jeb recovered consciousness slowly.
He found that he was lying against
a tree-trunk at one side of a meadow
which was crowded with a mass of
people and automobiles. A pale dawn
light washed over the sky. The studio-
technician sat on the grass beside Jeb,
while a nurse was taking Jeb’s pulse.
Jeb sat up, rubbing the painful swell-
ing at the base of his brain.

“He’ll be all right now,” the nurse
decided. She dumped six tablets into
Jeb’s hand. “Take one of these every
two hours.”

The nurse moved down into the
throng of people and the studio tech-
nician smiled tightly at Jeb. “Bowman
said to give you his apologies. It was
the only way he could get you out of
New York.”

“He”s still there?”

“He was, Mr. Williams. It’s all
over; not a city left standing any-
where on the earth.” The technician
shook his head. “A mighty brave man,
wasn’t he?”

“Cyril Bowman?”

“Sure. He stuck it out to the last,
broadcasting his warning to the
world.”

“But Bowman’s responsible for — ”

Blithely the technician ignored the
Interruption. “And Bowman pulled it
off, too. Do you realize Mr. Williams,
we haven’t had more than two thou-
sand bomb-casualties in the entire
country? A few minutes ago we made

TO SAVE A WORLD

radio contact with Eurasia; they’v#
come out of it as well as we did!”
Again Jeb tried to protest. “But
Cyril Bowman was only — ”

“Old Bowman’s done something else
for us, too; he’s brought the Eurasian
Confederacy and the League of Free
Nations together. Neither side has any-
thing now except wreckage, and the
Eurasians have proposed that we can
co-operate to rebuild the world.” The
technician stood up and fished a ciga-
rette from his pocket. “The Eurasians
call Bowman the man who saved the
world.” He nodded toward the crowd
cluttering the meadow. “Our people
are saying that, too.”

“Cyril Bowman?” Jeb nearly

IXTL IGO, SON!

she murmured. “A man of one’s own,
round and soft and old too, They all
die so young on Ceres. All are the
same. . .too hard, too thin, too young.”
She had come up to Old Dugan
who regarded her with sheepish, sag-
ging eyes. His mouth worked helpless-
ly. “Why, madam — ” he said splut-
tering. “Why-why-why — ”

Marie swept into his arms, forcing
her smooth red lips to his. She rev-
eled in rolling her cream-skinned
cheeks on his pudgy face. “Baby,” she
cooed, “oh, my darling baby!”

Old Dugan turned to James. He
tried to make a comeback. He tried
to get back. “Eleven hundred dollars
on the table, son — ”

But he couldn’t very well, with the
girl hanging on his mighty frame.
“Please,” she cried. “You do not have
a wife. No wife, please! This is all
mine, like a tub, a glorious mush-
room.”

Old Dugan sank into a chair, his
eyes suddenly wet. “As a matter of
fact,” he said, “I have never married.
My weight has been a disadvantage.
That, and an unfortunate escapade I
once had.” His lips trembled. “No on»

choked on the words. “The man who
saved the world?”

“And he’s given us a better world!
If we work with the Eurasians to re-
build, we’ll never split into factions
again.”

“Bowman, the hero, the legend;
we’ll teach our children that he gave
us a united planet.” Jeb began to laugh,
but it was very gentle laughter, be-
cause anything else would have shaken
into stabbing fire the dull pain throb-
bing in his head. He whispered very
softly, “Cyril Bowman: the man who
saved the world!”

In time, Jeb supposed, he might
even come to believe it himself.

★

( continued from page 69)

has ever loved me, you might say,”
he said.

She fell into his lap.

“The police are here,” said his sec-
retary from the door.

“Tell them there’s a madman run-
ning around here with a pair of snow-
shoes,” said Old Dugan instantly; “I
intend to prefer charges later. Now go
away and leave me alone.”

The secretary ogled and left.

“You too, Bosworth. You-ah-can
forget about the expense-account.”

James rose, relieved, but a thought
leaped into his mind, paused and
started to go, but he caught it.

“Oh — Chief, about that raise we
spoke of.” (They hadn’t) “I’ll just
tell the paymaster you approve it.”

“Yes, son, certainly; of course.
Don’t be a fool.”

James went, saying to Marie. “Well,
ixtl igo, kid.”

Marie, her face a daze of happiness
as she kissed her bald-headed mush-
room and rubbed his necktie to her
cheek, didn’t even bother to turn
around.

“Ixtl frpp,” she purred.

★

FUTURE Science Fiction

STAND WATCH IN THE SKY

TTHE DANAE were gone. Ladia and
her pet turned to leave.

I am not crying, she realized, sur-
prised.

“Ladia!”

The Earthman held her. “Ladia, I’m
sorry.”

She nodded wordlessly.

“I was a boy. A boy dreams. He
dreams things that are — impossible for
the man.”

She smiled faintly. A girl dreams,
too.

“Your people — they deserve better
than they’ve had. I’ll see to that.”

She nodded again. “Thank you,”
she whispered.

She left the alien stars behind, hold-
ing the stegosaur’s chubbiness in her
arms. What kind of superman com-
mands supermen ? she thought. Could
she possibly have understood even one
tenth of what that solitary Earthman
was? She looked down at the pet in her
arms. I created you. / am your life
and your death. I am your comfort
and protection. Do you understand
me?

And, as she returned to her familiar
loneliness, she thought of how terri-
bly lonely the Earthman must be.

★

READIN’ and WRITHIN’

(continued
from page 46)

S INCE I’VE objected to pretentiousness
on the part of other reviewers at times,
it doesn’t hurt to take a look in the mirror
now and then to see if there’s a mote in
my own eye. Part of what I’ve objected
to has been weighty consideration of items
which required little more than straight-
forward recommendation or rejection, allied
with cursory treatment of items which
should have been discussed at length.

When an anthologist has proven him-
self capable and effective, as Groff Conk-
lin has, there’s little point in raking over
the minutiae of his latest selections, un-
less a reviewer feels that (a) the antholo-
gist’s reputation is unwarranted (b) the
present offerings are not representative.
Neither is the ease with the two volumes
listed below.

Crown Publishers have sent me Conk-
lin’s “Omnibus of Science Fiction”, another
in the series of over-all anthologies, which
Conklin breaks up into his well-known cat-
egories; Wonders of Earth and of Man;
Inventions, Dangerous and Otherwise;
From Outer Space; Far Traveling; Adven-
tures in Dimension; and Worlds of To-
morrow. Actually, there is more fluidity
here than in the earliest volumes ill this
indefinite series; but the general approach
is just about the same as before, and the
range of quality varies (as usual) between
excellence and competence. If there are
less “great” stories than in earlier selec-
tions, what is offered is more representative
of general worthwhile fiction, as you will
find it over a course of months or years
in any consistently-reliable magazine.

Vanguard Press has sent me “Adven-
tures in Dimension”, a specialized collection
of tales dealing with time-travel and paral-
lel worlds. If I had to choose between this
and Conklin’s other book, I’d take this
sheerly on the ground that it offers a
more unusual selection, and sharper idea-
tion on the whole — although, be it noted,
there hag been no sacrifice in Conklin’s
standards of story value for the sake of
idea. The price is $2.95, and a just one for
what is offered.

Pellegrini and Cudahy ask $3.95 for
August Derleth’s collection, entitled
“Worlds of Tomorrow”, an anthology of
definitely off-trail and unusual yarns,
well worth a spot in your collection.

Greenberg, Publisher offers Kendall
Foster Crossen’s “Future Tense”, a collec-
tion of old and new tales, at $3.50. I
haven’t had a chance to read the new ma-
terial, but the reprints are all good ones;
on this basis alone, I’d say the book was
recommendable.

Twayne Publishers has instituted a fas-
cinating series of “triplets” — three short
novels in a single volume, all built on a
Common ground. The first is “Witches
Three” ($3.95), dealing with the central
subject of witchcraft, and offers “The
Blue Star” by Fletcher Pratt, "Conjure
Wife” by Fritz Leiber, and “There Shall
be no Darkness” by James Blish. Since
I’ve long considered the last as the finest
werewolf tale I’ve seen, there’s little point
in witn-holding a recommendation of this
volume until I got around to reading the
•the* two, r-EWL.

RAYMOND E. BANKS first came
up in the June 1953 issue of Dynamic
Science Fiction, with “Never Trust An
Intellectual” — which came in third.

IRVING COX, JR., is a semi-new-
comer; he’s been appearing within the
last year.

C tdJhAA

A READER asks me, “What can We
do when we like several stories in
an issue equally well? I suppose it
would louse up your rating system to
put two or more in tie-positions, but
that’s the way I’ve often felt.”

The answer is simple: if you feel
that two or more stories should be tied
for first-place, or second place, etc.,
then list them that way. Such rating
won’t harm my calculating-system in
the slightest; it’ll help show results a
little closer to the way you (and per-
haps other readers, who felt the same
way) really reacted to the stories.

Another reader asks, “Are votes
counted that don’t come in on the
preference-coupon? I’d like to vote, but
don’t want to cut my coupon out, even

though there’s only an ad on the other
side.”

Again, the answer is simple: I
count all votes, no matter how re-
ceived, so long as I can determine how
the reader is voting. That coupon is
merely for the purpose of encouraging
readers who haven’t the time to write
a letter or postcard (or who don’t feel
like making extended comment) to let
me know their reactions. It’s a con-
venience for some — but if you don’t
find it convient, then don’t bother with
it.

Still another asks, “Do you run let-
ters just as you receive them, or do
you cut them down?”

Well, that all depends. First of all,
I want to hear what you think — not
just what might look well in print.
That means that, at times, (where I
want to run a letter) I may have to
delete some personal comment which
wouldn’t go well in print (but which
I appreciate seeing, nonetheless) ; also,
a number of readers have objected to
running rating-lists in the letter depart-
ment, since “The Reckoning” covers
that item. Thus, if your rating-list (in-
cluding the vote on letters) is in the
body of your communication, I’ll prob-
ably delete it, after taking note of how

FUTURE Science Fiction

you voted, unless there’s a discussion
of the stories, or argument on the is-
sues brought up in another reader’s let-
ter. (On the matter of asides, I don’t
mind running slams and complaints,
but I’ve often snipped out some of the
more fulsome praise received. I loved
it, you understand, but such affection
is better in private.)

My thanks to all of you who’ve tak-
en heed of my request for letters typed
double-space, using only one side of
the sheet. Handwritten communica-
tions are as welcome as ever; it was
just the retyping-job on typed letters
received, where the writer used both
sides of the paper, that I objected to.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Dear Robert:

Even from a distance, the first »ight of
the May issue of Future Science Fiction
struck my soul with a nameless foreboding.
It oppressed me with unspeakable depres-
sion. My arm moved toward it as though
through molasses and a leaden tremor went
through my body as my fingers made first
contact.

I looked at it apprehensively. Looked all
right. Cover nice I Cover story by Tenn
and I love Tenn. Edges trimmed; appear-
ance respectable. Great! Great!

From whence then this cold shudder that
racked my being. Carefully, my back to the
wall, I riffled the pages and there — there —
THERE on page 52, in your review of
"Star Science Fiction Stories”, you men-
tion among its contents a story by Isaac
Asomiv.

Robert, you false friend, who is this
usurper, this base minion, Asomiv. I defy
him. Away with him.

Let it be announced to the world at large
that there is one Asimov and Asimov is his
name. No z’s, no double s’s, no e-n-l-o-n
suffixes.

And tell me no tales of typographical
errors. Typographical errors, forsooth You
spelled Comblunt correctly, also Winhdam,
Shekcly, Liebre, and Looster dul Roy. Why
then the difficulty with Asomiv, I mean
Asimov.

Confess it, fiend. It is a plot. An igno-
minious and vile plot. But grief over-
whelms me. — I can no more —

Dear Ike —

But of course! And at the risk of a
treason-trial, I shall tell some of the
dark secrets of the mighty SFEAA
(Society for the Eternal Aggravation

of Asimov), so you may have soma
idea of what the future holds for you.

This vile organization, composed of
an untold number of editors, printers,
proof-readers, reviewers, blurb-men,
etc., can be considered in more or less
permanent session, bursting into hor-
rid activity whenever the occasion
arises, or can be made to arise. Any-
one who has ever had, or is likely to
have, the opportunity of taking action
in respect to its aims is a member!
members who can find a novel way of
misspelling Asimov, or presenting an
ancient misspelling in a new light, are
signally honored. I dare not mention
how.

My contribution was, as you saw, a
new, different, and unusual misspell-
ing; and to this, I added the extra
twist of the knife by making sure that
your name appeared twice, spelled cor-
rectly the second time.

All of us love science-fiction, and
revere a great author thereof — name-
ly, and to wit, thee. But we fear that
fame and easy living will corrupt your
glory; therefore do we purge your
ease by incessant small irritations; for
without suffering, the noblest artist’s
hand begins to lose its power. RWL

•

FREDERIK B. CHRISTOFF

Dear Bob :

If I knew how to compliment you with
flowery phrases and compliments I would
do so but all I can say is, “What happened
down there at Columbia?” All these im-
provements, and you didn’t even mention
they were coming!

The cover layout is very attractive, and
if it doesn’t help sell the book nothing will.
It stands up very well with the best in the
pulp field. You have pleased a lot of peopl*
by this cover change; but, you weren’t hap-
y| you had to go and please everybody
y trimming the pages. This improves th*
book a hundred percent; even the paper
looks better, and I will say that there never
was a neater printing job done on a Co-
lumbia publication. Why, I can not find
one blurry word in the whole issue. You
even went as far as to cut down on those
little inside illos; this also improves the
layout, and if you did away with them all
together it would help all the more. To say
I am pleased is an understatement. Now all

DOWN TO EARTH

you need is a better quality paper, but even
as Future now stands, it is well worth thi
twenty five cents paid.

The best story, in my opinion, wa3 “Eco-
logical Onslaught”. Can’t make up my
mind if “Liberation of Earth” was a serious
story or a satire.

One Calvin Beck claims there are around
twenty Stf. mags on the market. I would
like to see him prove this by sending me a
list of the twenty-four mags he talks about,
if he can. This issue should tell him off
anent his complaints about Future.

— 39 Cameron Street S.,
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada

Listing the titles of magazines in
our orbit poses the problem of whether
you want to include every magazine
entirely devoted to fantasy and sci-
ence-fiction, or whether you only want
to list those which, by policy, are re-
stricted to science-fiction. I say “by
policy”, because any of them are like-
ly to run an occasional story which
you would consider fantasy, with or
without editorial acknowledgement of
the fact. But these are exceptions to
the general rule. Then again, you have
to remember that the field seems to
be very fluid; today’s count may not
be correct tomorrow.

“Liberation of Earth” is most defi-
nitely satire, but I’d say it was a serious
story in essence; that is, the author
was telling a tale with a definite point
above and beyond the action. It struck
me as being rather Voltairean in tone.

•

MARIL SHREWSBURY

Dear Bob:

I have nearly committed the unpardon-
able sin of condemning a magazine before
I read it, and in this case it was Future.
I bought the May issue of both your mags.
Science Fiction Quarterly, and Future. 1
read the quarterly first, and was so dis-
appointed with it that I very nearly didn’t
bother to read Future. But economics pre-
vailed (who can afford to waste a quar-
ter?) I went ahead and read it, and re-
ceived what amounted to the surprise of
my life. It was good — in fact, one of the
best issues of any magazine that I have
read in a long time. I usually shy away
from the “pulps” but the story-quality of
Future not only meets, but in some cases,
even surpasses the stories in the so-called,
high-class pocket-size magazines.

Being a full-fleged, green tinged /an, I

always read the letter-sections of the maga-
zines I buy, but I was sorely tempted to
pass yours up. It would be a lot more in-
teresting if you would wield the blue pencil
a little more hoavily, and cut those novel
type letters down to size. Speaking of
which, I now leave you, with the echos of
my fulsome praise ringing in your shell-
like ears (conch).

— Box 1296, Aransas Pass, Texas

General consensus of opinion is that
th# long discussions of dianetics, the-
osophy, nostradamianism, etc., have
about worn out their interest-value; so
they’re being dropped, after this is-
sue, except and unless someone has
something different and new to say —
at less than the lengths we’ve been
seeing.

It’s good to hear that you enjoyed
the May Future so much — just as good
as letters from those who enjoyed the
May Science Fiction Quarterly. Natch,
I’m as stricken at your disappointment
with the May Science Fiction Quarter-
ly, as I am with other readers’ disap-
pointment with the May Future. Ye
ed is much too close to the forest to
judge individual trees in such a case;
Future looked much better to my
bleary eyes, sheerly because of the
trimmed edges, and the neat print-job
throughout. . .beyond that, I pass.

•

LEO LOUIS MARTELLO

Dear Mr. Lowndes:

This is in answer to your footnote to my
letter in May Future! If a person in his
everyday behaviour is a thief or an assassin
he’ll be no different under hypnosis. You
can’t make him do anything against his
morals as he hasn’t any. "Superego" is the
Freudian word for conscience. Criminals,
thieves, assassins have none. They are
ruled solely by their id — by primitive, bar-
barian impulses checked by neither morals,
convention nor religion. To tell a thief un-
der hypnosis to steal, is the same as telling
any normal young man to kiss the pretty
girl next to him. It isn’t something con-
trary to his everyday practice. He isn’t do-
ing something he wouldn’t normally do. But
it isn’t the hypnosis that’s doing it — it’s
his own conscious and unconscious pattern
of behavior. If a girl will go to bed with
you under hypnosis, then she’d also go with
you while awake, too. To use hypnosis,
you’re only going about in a roundabout
Way to get what you could anyway.

FUTURE Science Fiction

A devout practicing Roman Catholic
won’t eat meat on Friday even if you tell
him it’s the Sabbath. But I repeat a devout
practicing Roman Catholic. . . . And even
if the hypnotist was able to cause an
hallucination that it wasn’t Friday and
make her eat meat (which would be met
with strong resistance from the subject)
there’s no sin committed, as she believed
it was another day. But for the hypnotist
to succeed in this suggestion there must be
a latent desire to eat the meat! Perhaps
“religious practice” would be better than
religious “convictions.”

The difference between Mesmerism and
Hypnotism is this: the former is named
after Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer who taught
an “invisible fluid” theory along with an-
imal magnetism. It was supposed that only
persons possessing strong personal mag-
netism could hypnotize. . .that they sent out
this magnetic fluid, which enabled them to
control all those who came to them. Then
too, Mesmerism consisted of numerous use-
less waving of the hands, passes, a power-
ful stare, special powers etc. etc.

Hypnotism was coined by Dr. .Tames
Braid who threw out the “magnetic fluids”
and Mesmeric passes, and showed it could
be induced by concentration upon a cer-
tain object. He’s the father of modern sci-
entific hypnotism, which proves passes, evil
eves, magnetic fluids etc. are not necessary
for hypnosis; that it’s mostly suggestion
associated with past conditionings (You’re
so tired, you’d just love to lie down!”)
and unconscious motivations. Mesmerism led
to Hypnotism. The former was an art and
theory taught by one particular man. The
latter is a science taught and used by
many, both lay and professional. One led
to the other. And in this Dr. Mesmer must
be given credit.

Judging by the numerous letters I’ve re-
ceived I’d say there definitely is a boom
in hypnotic interest. A few of the N. Y.
Future readers even came down to my
school whose doors are always open ....
I still like Future, having been with it from
the first and 20c or 25c I’ll keep buying it
as think it worth it. Thanks for hearing
me out.

A i/fr/c/v Hvpynris’r trt dfmy

49 West 85th St; New York 24, N.Y.

Anyone want to argue the point?
Meanwhile, without accepting your
theories, I just want to point out that
you have admitted what you formerly
denied: namely, that it is entirely pos-
sib’e for a person to commit a crime
under hypnosis.

NOAH W. McLEOD

Dear Sir:

I can’t praise you too highly for your

courage in publishing Lester del Rey’s ar
tide, “Get Thee Behind Me, Clio!” in thi
May Future. A radio-commentator who
dared express similar ideas would be forced
off the air. The very idea that Americans
achieved democracy, not because of moral
or racial superiority, but because they pos-
sessed the long rifle is a heresy to most
people. The idea that they are in the process
of losing their freedom, not solely because
of some devilish Communist plot, but be-
cause the decisive weapons have become too
expensive for the common man, and too
complicated for him to operate, would seem
t.o the man in the street to be Moscow-
inspired propaganda.

But it is a fact that the amount of free-
dom, and the share of this world’s goods
to which the common man attains, are de-
termined not by considerations of abstract
justice — but by the balance of power in the
community. And the most influential factor
in determining the balance of power is tha
armament in use at a given time, as Mc-
Kinley pointed out. I have not yet read
McKinley’s book, but I have read the rather
similar book, “Armament. And World His-
tory” by Major General Fuller — the British
tank expert and military historian. And I
can heartily recommend Fuller’s book. Mr.
del Rey should be writing books and ar-
ticles giving the actual facts of political
life to the public, or the more intelligent
members thereof; the man is too valuable
to waste on science-fiction.

I liked William Tenn’s “Liberation Of
Earth”. It was a very, very choice satire
on what happens to a small power which ft
fought over by two larger powers in A
modern total war. Give us more Tenn.

Jack Vance’s yarn “Ecological On-
slaught” was well-plotted and well-written.
But there is one detail that ruins the
credibility of the tale for me: — why drag
all those concubines or play-girls along
with the expedition? No doubt they were
nice to have along, but they used up scarce
rocket space, food, and air. It seems to me
that the logical thing to do would either
be psychologically to condition the expedi-
tion members against sex, or give them
some pill that would dull their desire for
women. But give us more Vance; he writes
interesting, if at times not very credible,
tales.

And you, Mr. Lowndes, keep up the good
work.

— Christine, North Dakota

There’s quite a bit of evidence to
support theories that the sex-drive
cannot be removed, either by drugs or
“psychological conditioning” — and that
when it is repressed over a long period
of time (as an interplanetary voyage
would be) the drive expresses itself
In various undesirable to deadly forms.

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The most overt of these seem to be
extreme power-lust and sadism, but
there are many other, less immediate-
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Whether Vance was using these the-
ories in “Ecological Onslaught”, or
whether he merely had the play-girls
for story-value, it seems to me that his
story justified the element. You must
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coincidence — although the latter obvi-
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(over-all) regimes have been those
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rather than a dissolute tyrant like
Nero.

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Deal’ Mr. Lowndes:

The del Rey article was quite fascinating
and I’ll have to look up this McKinley
bird, but I wonder how far you can carry
analogy when it comes to historical predic-
tion.

If I follow del Rey right, then it sounds
as if the mere fact of atomic weapons
(which are way beyond the abilities of the
man in the street to build, own, or operate)
spells out the end of democracy throughout
the world. Rightly then, if this is so, one
would have expected some sort of military
dictatorship in the USA and England by
j this time — or at least clear trends toward
one.

Consider: the US Army certainly doesn’t
want to see America blasted or invaded
by any other power, and the incidence of
atomic weapons makes such an event like-
ly — or at least possible. The US Army has
the know-how on atomic weapons, while the
government, as such, hasn’t.

Surely there must be some group within
tho Army which feels that civilian govern-
ment hasn’t handled the matters of nation-
al defense, and practical foreign policy
(aimed at discouraging warlike acts against
us) with anything like the skill and ef-
fectiveness that the Army itself could do,
were “realistic” military men in power.

Why hasn’t the army taken over? Why
hasn’t there been at least some moves in
that direction? After all, what could the
government do, if a group of rebels, armed
with tomics, said firmly, “Move out And
let us handle this, or else I”

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DOWN TO EARTH

Could it be that “republican” traditions
(stronger than “democratic" traditions, in
the long run) are more powerful than the
temptations and opportunities of the times?

After all, republican traditions kept
Rome pretty well in civilian hands (de-
spite the interregna of Marius, Sulla, and
Pompey) for quite a period after the
arms-situation was such that the legions
could have put up an emperor (or prince,
as the early emperors called themselves)
and made the change stick. It was only
after civilian government had shown itself
completely incompetent to handle an em-
pire (Caesar rightly complained that a
good part of his career had been spent
reconquering what corrupt and stupid sen-
ators had thrown away) that the move
toward monarchy was made. And repub-
lican strength was too divided to profit by
the conspiracy of Cassius and Brutus. (Ac-
tually, the conspirators considered them-
selves temporary dictators, anyway.)

At present, America does not have an
empire to defend in anything like the sense
of the Roman or other empires; and de-
spite corruption, republican traditions are
still strong. (After all, the Democrats ac-
cepted the Republican victory at the polls
last year.)

The fact of the matter is that the arms-
situation has been outside of the “common
man’s” control for at least a quarter of a
century; yet, republican traditions (so far
as civilian control goes) seem to have
gained, rather than lost strength. Bureauc-
racy has grown but it has not been based
on military might, either here or in the
British Empire.

“Democracy” has fallen easily, when the
arms-situation was such that the “common
man” couldn’t defend his “rights”, where
no democratic tradition of much strength
existed (Russia: the democratic Provision-
al Government of Kerensky falls before a
relatively small Bolshevik rebellion), or
where extreme corruption is mated with
hard times (France: defeated in the Na-
poleonic Wars, the economy unstable, cor-
ruption rife, the Republic is an easy victim
of Louis Napoleon’s coup d’etat; Germany:
a weak republic, following disasterous de-
feat and generations of authoritarian rule
cannot resist the Nasi seizure of power
under thin “legal” guises.

I could go on and on, but I think I’ve
made the point clear enough. What say the
right honorable Messers del Rey and Mc-
Kinley?

— Greenwich, Conn.

Hmm, I don’t know what they’ll
say, but I’ll bet we hear from them I

•

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